


The Next Seventh Chevron

by KalicoFox



Category: Log Horizon, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Here's how you build a planet kids, and make magic work in a technology based universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2018-10-20 18:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10668360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalicoFox/pseuds/KalicoFox
Summary: When SG-1 heads through the Stargate to explore some interesting looking ruins on a newly discovered seven chevron gate address, they end up finding way more than they expected. People claiming to know Earth, with strange powers and even stranger abilities? Ofcoursethis couldn't have gone smoothly.





	1. Prologue

Everybody likes some personal space now and then.

Some people like more space than others.

Some people don't need that much, and others need a lot.

And some people need lots.

Like, an entire galaxy's worth of space.

Or at least a few hundred thousand stars worth.

 

Actually, let's back up a bit. Hopefully it’ll make a bit more sense.

 

Somewhere around ten million years ago, there was a civilization that explored the stars. They had technology so advanced that many would call it magic, and they seeded many planets with life that they found to have formed in their image. Unfortunately, one such seeding went badly, and, after time had passed, they found themselves embroiled in a war they had never been prepared for. They lost, and they lost badly.

Eventually, they retreated through a portal to another land. A planet they had left behind long ago for fear of a deadly plague, and they sank their city-ship beneath the waves to wait for their return.

It wasn't until years had passed that the younger generation realized that the elders had never meant to return to their great city and grew discontented with this knowledge. Why leave and say it was to 'regroup', when in reality all they were doing was running away? It felt, to the younger ones, as though they had been lied to. As though the Elders had known and kept it a secret for fear that the youngers would have chosen to stay.

It was, some of the Younger admitted, a valid fear. But others argued that they would have left, if only to have a chance at developing technology that would have helped to defeat their great enemy.

Slowly, a schism developed, dividing the Elder and Younger generations, with very few on both sides choosing to abstain completely from the nearly constant arguments. Eventually it grew to be too much, and many of the Young decided to try their hand at something the Elders had already done.

They built a ship, and left.

The departure took many of the most promising minds away from Avalon (now called Earth), and although some of the ideas and notes that were left behind were expanded upon and experimented with, for the most part things simply stayed as they were, and indeed, in some cases, began to stagnate.

The Young, however, nearly exploded with creativity and experimentation. Free from the constraints of their Elders and the way that things had 'always been done', they discovered what had previously only been theorized; a harmonic theory of energy that provided power based on harmonic frequencies, and a call-and-response type delivery system.

Every so often they found a planet and settled for a while, building whatever labs were needed to run the more delicate or dangerous experiments that couldn’t be run on a ship for one reason or another. (The most common reason being that if something went wrong, it’d take out the entire ship.)

Still, they always moved on eventually. Nowhere felt quite right, and really, most of them were just plain having too much _fun_ traveling to settle down just yet.

It wasn't until they ventured into a cluster of stars in a tiny galaxy nearby that some of them came forward with an idea.

Why not, they proposed, alter a planet to work on the harmonic theory? Plant great rings of  Naquadah around the planet, tune them to respond to certain frequencies, and they would, while on the planet, be able to use the planet itself as many different kinds of technology.

But, another group countered, not only would the amount of Naquadah required be almost prohibitive, to actually get the desired responses; things that would closely mimic their own technology, there would have to be rings upon rings upon rings. It wouldn't be practical to have them inlaid upon the surface, and digging down to plant them in layers underground would be unpleasant at best, and nigh-unto impossible at worst.

Well then, a third group said cheerfully, wouldn't it just make more sense to build the planet from scratch?

That suggestion stunned everyone who heard it into silence, and, taking the lack of objection as tacit approval, the third group began making preparations to build their own planet.

 

(It should be noted that the third group was widely regarded with the same fascination you would give something particularly venomous. Beautiful, fascinating, and undeniably dangerous, but something about it makes you want to pick it up, _just to be sure_.)

 

No one was quite sure how, or who started it, but suddenly the ship was undergoing what seemed like major overhauls of practically every system that could be safely overhauled. What couldn't be overhauled was having replacements designed, tested, built, and then swapped in for the suddenly vastly obsolete technology that had been used before. The air of frenetic energy was contagious, and almost before anyone noticed, they were moving asteroids into place in a stable orbit around a small, yellow star.

"It's really similar to Avalon's star, isn't it?" someone mused dreamily, once, and somehow that idea percolated throughout the crew until it was widely known (though the source of the rumor was not) that they were going recreate Avalon.

Building a planet was, simultaneously, a task that was more difficult than they had thought, and easier than they'd imagined. With a gravity generator (and enough of a stabilizer to keep the whole thing in place) in the center of of a cluster of asteroids that had been fused together, all they had to do was continue nudging debris into range. Sure, finding the debris to nudge in the right direction was a bit of a chore, but once someone* had the bright idea of harvesting a nearby planet's moons for materials, it all went much faster.

   (*The someone may or may not have been, once again, a member of the third group. But really, what sort of planet needs over a hundred moons. Overcompensating much?)

Getting the rings into place as the planet was forming was actually the hardest part. They had to be able to resist the crushing pressure that the rest of the planet would put on them, and they had to be completely perfect the first time. There just plain wasn't time to undo and re-do mistakes.

In the end, someone had the bright idea to do two things. First, to create hollow rings. Tubes, more like, shaped into rings and sunk into the slowly heating stone and ice and metal that surrounded the new planetary core. Second, to fill those rings with liquid naquadah; a far, far more volatile substance, but one that is actually more capable of short energy pulses.

It would, the genius claimed, balance out the solid naquadah's propensity for sustained energy generation.

And so, further (extremely rapid) testing proved, it did.

More and more asteroids and bits of broken off moon joined the rapidly heating core, and rings were layered just so, so that, if they needed, or if they wanted, or if it ever became necessary, they could tweak the planet a little bit; make it a bit larger, or a bit smaller, just by shunting material into or out of the core. Several small, incredibly powerful wormhole generators would provide space for any excess material, rather than allowing it to be forced up through the ground and into the mantle, or the crust. To keep the rings as well calibrated as possible, there would need to be as little tectonic activity as they could manage.

More material piled on, and more rings were made. Hundreds and hundreds of the things, each carefully placed so that the energy fields they would create and interact with overlapped. There couldn't be any gaps, and, if there did end up being areas where certain responses were a bit more... energetic, well, that was something to deal with in the future.

It took a long time to get everything settled just so, but when they finally finished they were left with a barren rock, marked here and there with crevasses and chasms that led down unfathomable depths. With a planet devoid of anything, they sent down four devices that would create the building blocks of life, tossed a Stargate out of an airlock and into orbit, and left to explore the rest of their new, tiny galactic home.

Interestingly enough, although there were a few other habitable planets around the galaxy, none of them really caught hold of their attention the way their copy of Avalon had, and they found themselves returning to their planet often; checking on the terraformation progress even though it was unnecessary. It had such a draw for some of them, that as soon as there was enough atmosphere for them to breathe unaided, several groups shuttled down to the surface to get started on breeding and growing the algae and plants that would be a major contributor to maintaining the atmosphere.

Live soil was transported from a multitude of other worlds, and, when piled deep enough to reasonably expect to grow deeper rooted plants, it only covered a few acres.

Still, they were prepared to deal with waiting.

They ended up not having to wait nearly as long as they'd thought they might have to.

The rings worked better than they could have hoped and somehow the combination of harmonic based energy resonance, the patterning of the rings themselves, and how the rings had been laid out created a sort of pseudo-stargate. Instead of reaching from one planet to another, however, the pseudo-gate reached between dimensions to summon odd beings that would stay for a short time before reverting back to their home plane.

It took only a few weeks before the Lanteans had figured out exactly which harmonies to pluck to summon which beings, and soon after they were using stony beings to break down rocks into sand, then dust, then clay. Liquid-like beings helped carve channels for water to flow through, and hot-tempered, hot-bodied beings helped to warm their homes.

Creating new, fresh soil went so much faster after that discovery that the Lanteans opened up the stores of embryo they'd kept in stasis on board their ship and started to introduce animals to the new world. First small ones, like rodents, because they didn't eat too much, defecated quite a bit, and bred and died quickly. Then, when the ever growing water supplies were tested for suitability, fish and other water dwelling creatures were introduced as well.

Bit by bit, animals and plants were introduced to the virgin planet, and bit by bit the settlement of the Lanteans grew larger.

The seas grew deeper, the soil spread out, and slowly; so slowly that it was almost imperceptible, greenery covered the planet.

 

Eventually the planet came to be called Theldesia; a butchery of Theodosia, since the planet is meant to be the supreme gift from them, to their descendants, and anyone who makes their way there.

 

Eventually the Lanteans, now called Theldesians, introduce humanity to the planet, as a legacy to the seeding of civilization their ancestors did in Pegasus.

 

Eventually, genetic schisms arise, and three distinct races arise; capable of interbreeding, but still so morphologically different that there were lifespan gaps of over fifty years.

 

Eventually enough generations passed that the Lantean’s descendants barely knew that they'd been from anywhere else, and called themselves Alv. They, with their long lives and instinctive grasp of the technological magic of their forebears, grew arrogant enough that they sought to keep the other races from gaining as much proficiency as they have. A great spell is cast; to hold the so-called 'lesser races' back, and to ensure that the Alv will always remain the most magically powerful race on Theldesia. This spell forever changes the world, and incites the three races to rebellion.

 

A war is fought, and what Alv are not killed flee through the ring of their ancestors; returning to the world that was called Avalon, and leaving behind only a few signs of their passage in the hopes that others of their kind would find them and follow.

 

Six powerful women are born, and raised with tales of betrayal and anger poured into their ears. It festers in their hearts, and one by one each of the girls, twisted by the hatred they were raised on, rise up against those who had slaughtered their people.

Before the last of the Twisted Princesses dies, she casts a spell, calling upon the greatest magics of her people, and twists it until it produces monsters. Humanoid creatures that are inimical to all life outside of their own kind, and desire nothing more than the death of every other sentient species on the planet.

 

The Elves, Dwarves, and Humans were left scrambling, trying to keep up with the sudden influx of enemies that were both like and unlike the creatures that had routinely threatened the smaller villages at the outskirts of civilization. But they were outnumbered, and the first Great Spell prevented them from advancing quickly enough in skill of combat or magic to match the creatures that came to be called Demi-humans.

Eventually, it was decided that new races must be created or summoned. That decision led to the creation of the allied Demi-Human races; the Fox Tails, Wolf Fangs, and Werecats. These new races tipped the balance back towards equality, and the rate at which the so-called 'good' races were pushed back slowed. Still, it wasn't enough for those that remembered the sheer amount of territory they had occupied before the Second Great Spell, and yet another race was created.

This race was meant to take the place of the now-extinct Alv. They were to be of incredible magical talent, but physically weak enough that should they too fall to arrogance, they would be easily removed from power. What emerged instead was the Race of Ritual. Incredibly magically adept, the Race of Ritual had none of the instinctive grasp of Alven magic that even half-Alvs inherited pieces of. Instead, they intuited new ways of using magic and tended toward experimentation and research. Unfortunately, neither of those paths were particularly safe, and with their physical frailty and low fertility, the Race of Ritual was going extinct almost as soon as they came to exist.

It was the conjoined efforts of the Race of Ritual and what few Half Alv could be found that triggered the Third Great Spell, called the Second because the casting of the First had been known to only a few, and those few had died in defense of their people, letting the knowledge of what exactly the Alv had done to deserve extinction fade out of living memory. The spell called heroes who would defend their world.

 

The spell delivered, but not in any way the casters had been expecting.

 

Instead of great heroes like the members of the Thirteen Chivalric Orders, the beings who appeared were odd. Not in appearance; for all intents and purposes they looked like normal Theldesians. However, if one got close they would notice something uncanny about them. How still they stood. How little their eyes moved. How many of them ran around with weapons constantly in hand.

Many Theldesians called them abominations, or even monsters in their own right. Still, despite the fact that they never spoke outside of certain phrases, (spoken in an oddly flat voice,) and the fact that even when killed they simply revived in the nearest cathedral, and their meteoric progress when it came to magic or physical skills, they showed no interest in anything other than fulfilling the tasks the Theldesians gave them or fighting the monstrous demi-humans.

 

Until-

 

_"Where's a GM?"_

_"What's going on!?"_

_"I'm scared!"_

_"Somebody get me a Mod already!"_

_"What the hell is going on?!"_

 

A Great Spell.

Cast by persons unknown, for reasons unknown.

 

The Adventurers, who had been summoned before only in body, now inhabited those bodies. And no one knew how or why.

 

 _They_ called it The Apocalypse, or The Catastrophe.

 

The Theldesians, (People of the Land, to differentiate between themselves and the Adventurers) called it The Awakening amongst themselves. A time when suddenly the sleepwalking adventurers gained souls and became real people, rather than unnerving puppets.

It was the dawn of a new age.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which SG-1 visits their first planet in a new galaxy, the Shibuya Raid Team gets in contact with someone unexpected, and the two events overlap in unusual ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited July 19, 2018- Removed reference to General Hammond, inserted Doctor Weir. Changed relevant dialogue.

"So far so good, Ma’am." Sergeant Harriman expertly panned the M.A.L.P. camera from one side to the other, examining what seemed to be the inside of a cave with the air of a man who'd seen the insides of far too many caves through a security camera.

"We've got some movement," he noted, pausing the camera where a shadow had flickered for a moment before stilling again.

"Natives?" Elizabeth Weir asked, peering down at the screen.

"Or animals. More likely animals. I’m not seeing any lights or fire." Harriman agreed, and resumed panning across the cave. "There we go. The DHD looks fine."

On screen, the raised pedestal drew closer, then turned as the M.A.L.P. circled around it to get a good look at the buttons.

"Looks clear, Ma’am." Harriman judged a moment later, and Doctor Weir straightened up, looking out the window of the operations room and down into the staging room, meeting Colonel Jack O'Neill's eyes and giving him a short nod before pressing the button to turn on the microphone into the room.

"SG1, you are clear to go. Good luck."

The four figures in the room below didn't waste any time, hefting backpacks higher on their shoulders and doing one last weapons check before one by one stepping through a rippling, water-like curtain of energy.

A moment later, with a rushing sound not unlike a waterfall running backwards, the energy vanished, leaving behind only a ring, standing on edge, with a ramp leading up to it.

* * *

 _"Oh yeah! Krusty's here too!"_ Kanami's voice was cheerful, and Shiroe's eyes widened.

"Krusty's what!?"

_"He's here! We found him a couple of weeks ago, just wandering in the desert!"_

A deep breath.

Another.

"That's- that's really great. We were worried about him." Hopefully his voice didn't shake as much as he thought it had, and he tried to ignore the watery 'He's okay!' from behind him.

Static crackled, and another, unfamiliar voice interrupted the conversation. _"Teal'c? Major? We've got company, and it doesn't look friendly!"_

Shiroe blinked.

What?

 _"Shiroe?"_ Kanami's voice was curious, _"Who was that? More friends of yours? What did they say?"_

"No," Shiroe frowned, "that came over the radio. I don’t know who it was."

_"Really? That's so cool!"_

"It's not possible," Shiroe corrected, "we're currently using the only radio array in Yamato, and I'm not even sure how we’re reaching China!"

Another burst of static cut through whatever it was that Kanami was about to say, and Shiroe froze, listening.

_"Colonel, we ran into hostiles after the third fork. We’re going to have to fall back to the gate. We’ll meet you there."_

Shiroe's eyebrows lifted.

Major?

Colonel?

The first voice came crackling through the dish, sharp cracks of noise almost drowning out the shouted request for a status update from the Major.

Shiroe frowned. "That sounds oddly familiar..." he mused, and from Kanami's end of the connection he heard muffled shouting.

 _"Really?"_ This time Kanami's voice is more concerned than curious, _"What was it?"_

Rieze’s voice was strangled when she spoke. “Shiroe, you never played any fps games, did you?”

“No, why?”

“That was gunfire.”

Shiroe startled, almost dropping his staff.

"That's impossible!" He exclaimed, "Guns don't exist on Theldessia!"

_"Maybe an Adventurer re-created them?"_

Shiroe could almost see the concerned frown on Kanami's face.

“No,” Rieze disagreed, moving forward to stand where her voice would better reach the broadcast array, “It sounded more like an automatic weapon, and that’s really not something that you can just make witho-”

_"Sir, we're being pushed back to the gate by humanoid rats! We could really use some backup!"_

Shiroe froze.

He had no idea what gate the woman was talking about.

He had no idea where she was.

But.

“Rat-men inflict the Plague status effect…” Rieze murmured, her knuckles white around her staff. “And they don’t sound like adventurers.”

 _"Go on,"_ Kanami's voice was almost gentle, _"They need help, right? I'll still be here when you get back!"_

"There's no guarantee that the array will continue to function for much longer," ReGan warned him, glancing up from where he'd been fiddling with the wires that connected the radio array to the odd power pack he'd hauled through the building.

 _"Then you'll just have to save them quickly!"_ Kanami said impatiently, _"And if we don't get a chance to say goodbye, that's fine! We'll just have to hurry and get to Yamato as fast as we can!"_

"Right." two fingers adjusted his glasses, and for a moment he was silent, thinking hard.

"Radios." Shiroe said abruptly, his head coming up with the realization, "That's how we're hearing them; they're using radios too. Short range, more than likely, and military issue, since they're calling each other Colonel and Major. The range on those is..." he paused, then, shook his head, "variable, depending on terrain, but no more than a few kilometres."

"They don't seem to be able to hear one another," Soujiro put in helpfully, and Shiroe nodded.

"Difficult terrain can interfere with the signal, but we're higher up, and using a more powerful array, so we can hear them."

Two steps took him to the door, and for a split second he hesitated, glancing back at the radio array.

"I'll talk to you soon, Kanami," he called, and got a happy laugh and cheer of _"Go get 'em!"_ before he strode out of the room.

"Does anyone remember the nearest location that spawns Rat-men?" he asked the room at large.

"Nakano?" Kitsunesaru ventured, his brow furrowed as he thought. "I think Rat-men spawn there sometimes."

"Some of the areas in the Hero's Mausoleum," Kushi Yatama added, and Soujiro, having followed Shiroe out of the radio room, nodded.

"Shinjuku Underground, too." He added, "Those three are the closest dungeons I know of, though."

Several of the others, all older players, added their assent and Shiroe planted his staff in front of himself, running his fingers over the smoothed wood as he thought.

"Are we going to go help them?" Hien asked, and Shiroe raised his eyebrow at the Wolf Fang, who shrugged and pointed at the wolf ears poking through his hair. "What? It's not like most of us couldn't hear."

Shiroe sighed, then nodded. "Anyone who wants to help is welcome. Split into three groups and head out. I, and anyone who wants to come, am going to the Shinjuku Underground Passage. Those of you who were listening, please fill in those who weren’t, but do it on the move. From the sound of it those people don't have a lot of time."

And with that, he strode toward the door, his cloak billowing behind him.

To absolutely no one's surprise, a flash of pink heralded Akatsuki teleporting to his side, falling in step with him as though she'd simply walked up. Minori and Tohya were next, and Shiroe glanced at Naotsugu as they passed him. The Guardian gave a barely perceptible nod, and fell in behind the four, pulling his griffon whistle out of his inventory as he went.

"We're going to be moving fast," Shiroe said, his face intent as they stepped through the shattered front doors and out into the bright sunlight, "but I know you all can handle it. It's not going to be quite as hard as the raid we just finished, but there is a chance that we won't make it in time. Those people could already be..."

He trailed off, swallowing uncomfortably.

"It'll be fine." Minori's voice was firm, and when Shiroe glanced down at her from the corner of his eye her face was as stubborn as if she'd just been told that she couldn't be a proper strategist because she was just a healer. And a girl.

(Shiroe had been around the corner when the luckless Guardian from one of the smallest guilds had said that, and the blistering diatribe Minori had unleashed had been worth the teeth marks Shiroe had left in his own hand trying not to laugh.)

“Yeah!” Tohya agreed, his smile full of steely eyed determination, “We’ll be fine, and those people will be fine too!”

Akatsuki huffed in agreement on his other side, and Naotsugu just shoved him gently in between the shoulder blades, rushing him the last couple of steps toward the clear area that would be best for summoning the griffons.

Two whistles, high and clear, soared through the clear air, and Shiroe listened for the returning screech of the griffons before turning toward his guildmates.

“Minori, you’ll be riding with Naotsugu. You’re light enough that it shouldn’t encumber the Griffon. Tohya, you’ll be with me and Akatsuki-”

“We’re coming too!!” Tetora, Isuzu, and Rundelhaus Code darted through the broken doors and across the cracked asphalt, Nyanta strolling along in their wake with his own griffon whistle raised to his lips.

Shiroe blinked, then looked between the seven adventurers and the two griffons that were only just touching down.

Even the _griffons_ looked skeptical.

Right.

“Minori, Tetora, with Naotsugu. Isuzu, Akatsuki, Tohya, with me. Rundelhaus, go with Chief Nyanta-”

“I’m heading to Nakano, nya~” the were-cat said, swinging up into the saddle of his griffon and pulling Serera to sit in front of him. Henrietta clambered up behind him, only slightly awkwardly, and settled stiffly into the saddle. “Isami and Yuzuko’ll follow, and Rudy can go with them.”

Rudy hesitated for a moment, glancing between Isuzu, Nyanta, and Shiroe, before nodding firmly.

“I won’t let you down, Master Shiroe!”

“Good.” Shiroe waited for a moment, watching as the blond boy trotted over to join the two women, then steeled himself. “Good luck!”

Slim fingers clutched the reins of his griffon tightly for a moment, then Shiroe tapped his heels against the feathered sides of his mount, which leaped into the air with great, surging beats of its wings.

“Why are so many more people coming with us?” Isuzu asked, peering back down at the ground, where a fourth griffon had just landed in front of a group headed by Soujiro.

“The Underground Passage for Shinjuku is huge,” Akatsuki explained, “And we aren’t sure where those people are, if they’re even there. Having more people means we’ll be able to split up if we need to, and move faster because we’ll be beating the monsters faster.”

“Nakano Mall is fairly large as well,” Shiroe added, “But the trick with that dungeon is the layout. It gets really confusing for some people, which is why Nyanta is going; he used to farm there when he first started playing Elder Tales.”

“Ohhh, what’s the other place? The Hero’s Mustang?”

“Mausoleum,” Shiroe corrected automatically, “The whole area is a haunted graveyard. Once a year or so there’s an event; The Festival of The New Emperor’s Return. Most of the monsters there are undead, but in a couple of the underground crypts there’s places where Rat-men can spawn.”

“Huh.” Isuzu sat back thoughtfully, “Are we going to have to worry about that?”

Shiroe shrugged, “Maybe. It all depends.”

For a moment the three of them flew in silence, then Isuzu twisted around to get a better look at where Naotsugu’s griffon was flying laboriously after Shiroe’s. “Is that griffon going to be okay?”

Shiroe glanced back, wincing. “I hope so. I don’t think it would have taken off if it was overloaded, but we might have to avoid having Naotsugu summon it for a while, just to let it rest after this.”

Isuzu grinned at that, and at Naotsugu’s imagined reaction to it, then tucked her face close to Shiroe’s back to get her leaking eyes out of the air rushing past her face.

It was only another couple of minutes before the Shiroe saw the ruins of the above-ground part of Shinjuku station and the village that had sprung up in and around them and angled his griffon towards the ground as close as he could get to the entrance he was most familiar with.

The griffon landed with a light thump, and its three passengers dismounted as fast as possible, Shiroe dismissing his mount with a soft ‘thank you’ and a quick beak scratch.

Instead of flying off immediately, however, it waited until Naotsugu, Tetora, and Minori had dismounted, then paced over to Naotsugu’s mount and checked it over concernedly.

Shiroe ignored the byplay, focusing instead on the stairwell that led down into the underground part of the ruined version of Shinjuku Station.

“I always hated coming here.” Akatsuki muttered darkly from beside him, glaring balefully at the dark stairwell, “I had enough of getting lost in the real world.”

Shiroe stifled a snort, and hid his grin behind his hand. He knew exactly what she meant.

Even in real life Shinjuku Station was a nightmare to navigate, with stairways that led to floors with no other stairways off, or floors that could only be accessed by elevator. Unless you spent a lot of time there, you could usually count on being hopelessly lost within five minutes. And of course, the Shinjuku Underground Passage had to be sufficiently different from the real world version that no one had an advantage, so there were even more twists and turns and dead ends.

Even though the monsters weren’t too hard to deal with, the Shinjuku Underground Passage was still one of the most hated dungeons on the Yamato server.

“So what’s the plan, Mastermind?” Naotsugu asked, coming to stand next to him and peering down the stairwell.

“We’re going to take this as systematically as we can,” Shiroe said, “keep your eyes open for signs of combat, and whatever you do, don’t attack the Rat-men. They don’t usually attack first unless they’re cornered or you’re a lower level, so as long as we move fast we should be able to get through without being bogged down by fighting everything.”

“Sounds good to me!” Tohya grinned, settling his hand on the hilt of his sword and staring eagerly into the darkness.

“Minori?” Shiroe asked, glancing at her, “Tetora? Last chance to back out.”

Minori scowled up at him, her grip on her staff tightening until her knuckles were white. “I’m staying.” She informed him, and Tetora grinned broadly at him.

“I can’t just sit back and let the opportunity for others to bask in my presence pass by!” She chirped, “There’s no way I’d ever forgive myself!”

Shiroe sighed, smiling fondly, and nodded once.

“All right then. Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A battle is fought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 19 July, 2018- Removed references to the Ori, adjust dialogue to account for change.
> 
> Hey! Yeah, I'm alive, and after two years, we're finally in an apartment again! WOOHOO!  
> I've been blocked on this chapter the whole time, but saturday, I sat down to look at it again, and the words just started flowing. I finished it that night, and now, I present it to you.  
> Loyal readers, thank you so much for sticking with me, and for reading. We don't have internet in the new place, it's too expensive, but I feel like I might actually be able to finish this story, so I'll be working on it regularly for the time being, and posting when I can. Hopefully I'll be able to set up a weekly posting schedule or something.

Shinjuku Underground Passage was a dark, damp, maze. The floor was lined in cracked and broken tiles, roots poked through the ceiling in places, and the musty smell of mold and decay filled the air.

Shiroe's Magic Light was enough to cast a pool of golden light around himself and Tohya as they moved quickly through the ruined hallways, but past their small circle of light everything faded quickly from shades of grey out into true darkness.

"Did you hear that?" Tohya asked, his voice a touch sharp as he paused, tilting his head in an attempt to hear better.

Shiroe stopped, listening hard for whatever had caught Tohya's attention, and drew in a sharp breath as a faint, echoing 'crack' cut through the soft rustling of rat-men moving around in the shadows.

"I heard it."

Tohya scowled, frustrated, "I can't tell where it's coming from!"

"It's fine." Shiroe said firmly, "Let's keep going."

Still, he picked up the pace a little, lengthening his stride until Tohya was half jogging to keep up.

"Do you think Minori and Isuzu are all right?" Tohya asked worriedly, scanning the walls and ceiling for any hint that the people they'd come after had passed this way.

"They'll be fine." Shiroe said firmly, "Naotsugu, Akatsuki, and Tetora won't let anything happen to them."

"Yeah, but-"

The ringing of the voice chat alert interrupted Tohya, and Shiroe stopped in his tracks, one hand shooting out to seize Tohya's shoulder even as he answered it.

"Naotsugu? Did you find them?"

 _"Did I ever!"_ Naotsugu's voice was loud and tense. _"They must've aggroed three quarters of the zone!"_

"Where are you?" Shiroe half-turned, pulling Tohya with him.

_"You remember where we were when that jerkface decided he wanted to kill-steal? And then tried to get his higher level buddy to come down and 'teach us a lesson'?"_

Shiroe paused, thinking, "Yeah, I remember. I'll be there as soon as I can."

_"Try and send the shrimp, too. Minori's doing great, but we could use a little more backup. And a healer."_

And with that, Naotsugu's telepathic voice cut off.

"Damn." Shiroe muttered under his breath, then, louder, "Naotsugu and Minori found them. We need to backtrack a ways. Keep an eye out, okay? I'm going to call Akatsuki."

"Right!" Tohya said, and took point as they rushed back through the dark hallways, Shiroe filling Akatsuki in and giving her directions to wherever Naotsugu and Minori were in a tight, clipped voice.

"Left here," he said abruptly, interrupting himself, and the two swung around a corner and blew through a huge room that looked like it might have been some sort of department store at one point.

A flash of pink heralded Akatsuki's arrival as she paused just long enough to be visible, then vanished again.

"Wait." Shiroe said, skidding to a halt, "Isuzu and Tetora are almost here. We need to go in together."

"But Minori-!"

"Is fine." Shiroe said, "Naotsugu said she's doing well. The real concern is the others, whoever they are, and we won't be much good if Tetora gets lost."

A foot scuffed against the floor, sending a rock skittering out of the way, and someone huffed behind Shiroe.

"I'm not that helpless, yanno! I have been here before!"

"Then let's just humor me, for my peace of mind." Shiroe suggested, half turning so that he could get a good look at the two other adventurers as they jogged across the room to join them.

"Fine." Tetora sighed, rolling her eyes as she hopped the last few steps. "How're you guys doing? Everything okay?"

"We're fine," Shiroe said, "But Naotsugu wanted to make sure you were around to help with whoever these guys are. Apparently they aggroed over half the zone."

"Oh jeez!" Isuzu yelped, her eyes wide, "Seriously?"

"We'd better get going, then!" Tetora grinned, "If Naotsugu specifically requested my fabulous self, I can't keep him waiting!"

That was something Shiroe wasn't going to touch with a ten foot pole.

But still... "This way."

The four hurried through the room and down another corridor, following the sounds of combat to a large chamber with a high, arched ceiling that seemed to vanish into the darkness above them. Several doors led off in different directions, and Naotsugu had planted himself in front of one of them, keeping any of the hostile monsters from getting past him to where, Shiroe assumed, the non-adventurers were holed up.

A flash of light and the blooming of a barrier, centered just behind Naotsugu made him amend that thought. Apparently Minori was in there too.

The Nightmare Sphere, cast directly at where the most rat-men had gathered, was nearly automatic. The Mind Shock, cast a split second later, hit almost the exact same place, and Shiroe took the moment the rat-men were disoriented to really get a good look at the battlefield.

Naotsugu was guarding a doorway. He wouldn't be able to leave his position without compromising his defense until the rat men were drawn away. Not going to happen until someone else got more hate than he had. Akatsuki seemed to be working on that, but an assassin wasn't really good for the whole stand and fight thing.

So. No kiting them away. They'd have to handle the situation as it stood.

"Tohya," Shiroe murmured, and the Samurai stepped forward, unsheathing his sword and holding it ready in front of himself.

"Tetora?"

"Got it." The Cleric's voice was uncharacteristically serious, and Shiroe raised his hand, opening up the party chat and player profiles as the three smaller parties merged into one, with him as the leader.

"Akatsuki, get Tetora into that room. Naotsugu, get ready; I'm going to start channeling in three, two, one,"

The Mana Channeling spell snaps into place with an almost audible click, draining mana from all of them, then feeding it back in a rush of magical power that made Naotsugu whoop with gleeful laughter.

"All right! Now we're talkin'!"

"Be ready," Akatsuki's voice was calm, distant and focused through the chat, "Clearing a path in five."

"Right." Tetora grinned, and readied herself to run.

Sure enough, five seconds later a whirling dervish of purple and silver cut through the rat-men, chaining skill after skill to clear a safe path from where Tetora was waiting to the area that Naotsugu had all but claimed as his own.

Tetora didn't waste any time in taking advantage of the gap, darting after Akatsuki with almost manic laughter as she danced around the few stragglers that had made it through Akatsuki's assault unscathed.

"Upsie-daisy!" She chirped, a hand on Naotsugu's shoulder guard assisting her in vaulting over the Guardian and into the room behind him.

"All right, I'm in!'

A couple seconds later, the rainbow light of an Aurora Heal streamed out of the doorway, reaching out to dance around each of the members of the party.

  


"Oh no you don't!" Tohya growled, spotting a couple of rat-men that had turned toward Shiroe. "Vacuum Slash!"

His blade glowed as he swung it, too far away from the rat-men to hit, but close enough that the skill managed to knock them backwards, shallow cuts across their chest making them shriek in indignation.

The glittering beam of bardic energy that followed Tohya's skill knocked them even further back, right into Naotsugu's range just as he activated Anchor Howl and bellowed his challenge to the rat-men.

Now that the entire group was present, they were whittling down the rat-men at an impressive speed.

In fact…

Shiroe frowned, searching through shifting, chattering crowd.

Naotsugu had said they'd aggroed over half the zone... he'd know that if... there.

Red and black paint caught his eye, and Shiroe grimaced.

"We've got Rat Shamans." He announced grimly, "Two of them, near the back of the crowd, closest to the third and fourth doors on the right side. Be careful; Rat Shamans usually start summoning plague spirits if they get down to below half health. The usual goal is to get them to just over half, then take them out in one hit, or a chain. Do _not_ let them summon the plague spirits."

* * *

Doctor Daniel Jackson was not having a good day.

Granted, he'd had worse, but on a sliding scale from 'day my parents died' to 'finding out that my wife was kidnapped by parasitic aliens and is now pregnant with _not_ my child' or even 'just died. Twice.' this day was pretty up there.

Actually, looking at it on that scale, dealing with mutant rat people that somehow transmitted a super accelerated disease through their bite wasn't that bad.

So.

Apparently Doctor Daniel Jackson was having a slightly better day than he'd previously thought he was having.

Sam, Jack, and Teal'c, on the other hand, looked like they were having much worse days than he was. Probably because, although they'd all been bitten at least once by the rat-people, he was the only one of the three that wasn't experiencing some sort of symptom of illness.

"They'll be fine,"

Daniel looked up, forcing a smile at the young woman who'd done _something_ and created a glowing pattern of light against the stone floor.

"The rest of our party is on their way, which means Tetora should be here soon." she continued, pushing herself off her knees and brushing herself off.

"I'm sorry, Tetora?" Daniel asked, and got a grimace, then a sheepish laugh,

"Sorry! Tetora's our cleric, and a way higher level than I am, so she'll be able to cure your friends! I'm Minori, by the way, and this is Naotsugu!"

"Pleased to meet you."

The words flowed off his tongue automatically, and he barely noticed Minori turning away to peer past where Naotsugu was blocking the doorway, his mind too preoccupied with dissecting the implications of what he'd just heard.

It might have just been a glitch in the Stargate's translation matrix, but... Cleric? Higher level?

Those were... actually pretty specific terms.

Terms that came from games, and that he hadn't come across anywhere off earth before.

Granted, that didn't necessarily mean anything. So many of the cultures they'd come across were based off of ancient Terran civilizations that it might actually be decently likely that one of them had come up with those terms.

The lines of light glowing on the floor flickered, then faded completely away, and the girl, Minori, winced.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"Nothing's wrong, exactly, I was just hoping Master Shiroe would get here before that spell wore off... Hang on,"

The staff in her hand swung, pointing directly at the other stranger's armored back, light gathering amidst the bells.

"Protective Barrier!"

The light brightened, flashing once before darting into and through the man in the doorway. Daniel caught a glimpse of red and gold light, suspended in midair in front of the man, before his view was blocked again.

Minori grinned at a muffled shout, then brightened further, reaching with one hand up to her ear as if she were holding a phone.

"Master Shiroe! You're here!"

Daniel blinked, almost glancing around to see who the girl was talking to before the way she was nodding and humming agreement caught up with him. Obviously there wasn't anyone else here. She had to have some sort of communication device.

"Sir? Um, excuse me?"

Daniel blinked, then looked down at serious brown eyes.

"My guildmates are here, now. You don't have to worry any more!"

"Oh, right... thanks."

Minori beamed at him, then planted her staff and seemed to brace herself.

"What-?"

Something drained out of the girl, and she sagged alarmingly. Worried that one of his rescuers was suddenly about to fall over, Daniel reached toward her, but just as abruptly whatever it was seemed to reverse itself and she straightened again, watching the door with bright eyes.

For a moment nothing happened, then the noise from outside increased abruptly, and, with a flash of pink light, someone else was in the room with them.

"Upsie-daisy!"

And a second person vaulted over the shoulder of the man who'd been guarding the doorway.

When Minori had mentioned her guildmates, Daniel had expected more people dressed like she was; in robes that seemed to mimic various traditional asian styles of dress.

A pink haired young woman in plaid suspenders, black shorts, and a top hat was nothing like what he'd expected.

"Hi!" the pink haired girl chirped, pulling a microphone out of nowhere as she looked around.

"Hello..." Daniel said slowly, glancing from the first newcomer back to the effervescant girl in front of him, "are you Tetora?"

"Hey! You've heard of me! That's great! I am indeed the Galaxy Idol Tetora, bask in my beauty and be amazed! Just don't fall in love with me, okay? I'm holding out for Naotsugu!"

The last part was said much louder, with a wide grin directed at the back of the armor in the doorway, and a pair of quickly-stifled snickers couldn't drown out the yelp of indignation from the other man.

"So, let's get a look at your friends," Suddenly the woman was all business, and Daniel blinked, but stepped to one side so that she could see past him to where Jack, Sam, and Teal'c were propped up against the wall, eyes shut, faces pale and sweaty.

"Oof," Tetora winced, "that doesn't look good."

Daniel's eyes widened in alarm, "Does that mean-?"

"No, don't worry," Tetora waved him off, "It's just always hard seeing how debuffs affect Landers. They'll be fine."

For a second Tetora did nothing, then she flashed a quick smile at Daniel, and spun the microphone around in her hand, ending the motion with it pointed squarely at Sam.

"Aurora Heal!"

The waves of rainbow light that flowed out of the microphone were entirely unexpected, and Daniel watched anxiously as they flowed around and through his team.

Tetora, it seemed, wasn't done, sweeping her microphone at the sick members of SG-1.

"Mass Restoration!"

This time Daniel was expecting a light show, and the soft wave of golden light that washed the fever-flush out of his teammates was more than welcome.

As soon as it faded, Daniel was on his knees in front of them, checking pulses and temperatures. He only stopped when Sam smacked sleepily at his hands and Jack snarled at him the same way he would if he were being woken up on his day off.

Teal'c, on the other hand, snapped awake at Daniel's first touch, his eyes darting around the small room before meeting Daniel's eyes in a silent question.

"They're friends," Daniel answered, keeping his voice quiet, "Tetora healed you, Sam, and Jack" indicating her with his hand. Tetora soaked up the attention and bowed with a flourish.

"I see."

Teal'c levered himself to his feet, bringing his staff weapon up with him and inclining his head toward the three young women in the room. "You have my thanks."

"It was no trouble," Minori said, smiling politely, and Tetora tsked at her, then turned a bright smile on Teal'c.

"You're welcome!"

The third girl, as small as Minori, with dark hair that nearly brushed the ground even from the ponytail it was in, said nothing, watching the two men with dark, wary eyes.

Abruptly, all three of the women paused, heads tilting to one side, or reaching up with a hand to an ear, then they burst into motion.

"I'll stay," Tetora said, "I can heal just as well from back here, and I can't let anything happen to these good looks! My fans would riot!"

"Good," the dark haired woman said, "Minori, I'll get you to Lord Shiroe. Naotsugu?"

A muffled sound of assent came from the armor, and, after a moment, it moved away, turning to reveal the man inside.

Previously, Daniel had gotten the impression of a large, serious man inside the bulky armor. Now though, looking at the wide grin on his face, it was like looking at a completely different person.

"Ready when you are, squirt."

"Don't _call_ me that!"

Daniel blinked in surprise, watching the stoic young woman flare up at the man in armor before unsheathing a short sword and falling into a ready position.

Minori took a deep breath, tightened her grip on her staff, and, on no signal Daniel could see, the two of them darted out of the doorway and out of sight.

"I've got the doorway," Tetora chirped, moving to take the armored man's place.

"Yeah, yeah." He grumbled, and moved out of sight as well.

"What's going on?" Daniel asked, moving to peer cautiously over Tetora's shoulder into the larger room.

Teal'c was a silent shadow on her other side, surveying the throngs of rat-like people.

If Tetora was uncomfortable with being flanked by two unknown men, she didn't show it. Instead, she started pointing things out.

"Akatsuki, you know, the short one with the hair? She's helping Minori get to Shiroe. He's our strategist, and Minori is his apprentice, so it's good for her to be close to him. Plus Minori doesn't have to be close range for her spells to be useful, so it's best if she's up and out of the way. Naotsugu is a Guardian," she gestured across the short empty area directly in front of the door at where the man in armor was taking on five of the rat people at once. "so his whole thing is keeping people safe. Protecting them, yanno? He'll make sure that nothing gets past him. I'm here as insurance, and 'cause I'm a Cleric I don't have to be out there to be effective, too."

A small burst of musical sound drew Daniel's attention over to one corner of the battlefield, where a boy in asian-looking, almost samurai-esque armor was standing defensively in front of a girl holding a polearm.

"Are they going to be okay?" He asked worriedly, and Tetora followed his gaze, then laughed.

"Oh yeah, they'll be fine, watch!"

Daniel did, clenching his fists as a group of rat-people closed in on the two.

A flash of pink heralded the appearance of Akatsuki, who whirled through the group with her sword a blur of silver.

More musical bursts of sound echoed through the room as rat-person after rat-person dissolved into... bubbles?

"Okie dokie!" Tetora said, apropos of nothing, and a wave of her microphone made a six pointed star made of silver light appear. Carefully, Tetora pointed it towards the two people who'd been surrounded, and after a moment the boy was surrounded in a pale silver glow.

"What was that?" Daniel asked, and Tetora glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Healing Light. It's another healing spell, sort of like Aurora Heal, but tiny,"

She frowned, then winced and opened her mouth to say something, only to shut it again and smile with a sort of grim satisfaction at something she saw.

"Don't worry," she said, obviously trying to be reassuring, "We've got this."

"Indeed you do." Teal'c agreed, and stepped further back into the room, staring at Daniel until he, reluctantly, followed the Jaffa back towards where Sam and Jack were still sleeping.

"What is it, Teal'c?"

"We should not distract warriors in the midst of battle. It is... rude."

Daniel sighed, running and hand distractedly through his hair before nodding, "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. I'm just..." he gestured vaguely with his hands, and Teal'c inclined his head.

"I too, am disconcerted by the strange weaponry that our rescuers use. They are like nothing I have seen before, and I do not recall having heard of them before. Nor do I recall ever having heard of a 'Cleric'."

Daniel paused, then headed over to sit against the wall in between the door and Jack and Sam. "As far as I know, clerics have never actually existed. Some religions on Terra call members of their particular sect 'clergy', but the concept of a cleric is someone who worships a particular deity in return for certain abilities. It's a concept that was popularized through a few different games and movies, and I've never heard the term used outside of that context before."

Teal'c paused, his eyes narrowing as he looked over at where Tetora was watching the fighting, occasionally waving her microphone to cause some odd effect or another.

“She does not seem like a particularly devout individual,” he observed quietly, and Daniel shrugged.

“That’s just the way it’s used on Earth; maybe things are different here.”

Something outside their room rumbled, then exploded in a roar of sound that had Jack and Sam jolting out of sleep, swearing as they scrambled to their feet and looked around with wild eyes.

In the doorway, Tetora swore quietly, then whirled around to look at them, scanning them for... something.

"Hey, big guy, can you use that staff to hold the doorway? We didn't get the Shamans fast enough, so it's all hands on deck now."

Teal'c nodded, moving to plant himself firmly in the doorway even as Jack started forward, hefting his P90 into a ready grip.

Pink eyes flickered over all of them, pinning them in place as she spoke.

"You guys aren't in party with us, okay? You can't leave this room, because PVP is a thing. Friendly fire _isn't_ , right? That's a thing you guys say? Big guy, anything that gets past us? Hold it off, don't let it bite you, and shout for help if you need it. I'm serious, do _not_ leave this room. We won't be able to rez you if you die."

And with that, she turned in a whirl of pink hair and, cheerful smile firmly back in place, bounced over to stand very nearly in the center of the main room.

"Fun girl," Jack muttered, peering around Teal'c to try to catch a glimpse of the situation, "very friendly."

"She cured you three," Daniel said, mildly reproving, "and honestly, I'm not sure what kind of weapons or abilities these people have, but I know I wouldn't want to get hit by some of what they're throwing around."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, edging in between Jack and Teal'c to get a good look out the door.

She was just in time to watch a group of the rat-people dog pile each other, then melt and shift, melding into each other and forming a glowing, scarlet mass that heaved, oozed, and then grew, sprouting the arms, legs, and head of a giant, twisted rat. But this rat was like no rat Daniel had ever seen before, with sleek fur and bright eyes.

No.

This rat was the rat of nightmares. The rats that children think of when they hear of the black plague, with huge patches of fur missed in oozing clumps and eyes that wept pus in thick, green streams.

"Oh my god," Sam breathed, horrified.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Jack muttered, and Daniel nodded silently.

The smell was overwhelmingly nauseating, and Tetora was almost directly underneath the gaping jaw of the giant rat.

"She does not seem concerned," Teal'c observed, and indeed, Tetora was bouncing from spot to spot, avoiding more of the smaller rat-people until, with a sudden shout, she stopped.

Naotsugu charged forward, skidding to a halt a good twenty feet away from her, and _bellowed._

Almost as though they were magnetically attracted to him, the rat people turned away from Tetora and converged en mass on Naotsugu.

Light flared, then burned, then _blazed_ from where Tetora stood, flooding out and away from her in a square that sent multicolor sparks of energy floating into the air. One by one, the rest of their rescuers found their way into the square, and, somehow, it seemed to reinvigorate them.

Too, it seemed as though their entire strategy had changed. Before they'd been trying to whittle down the opposition slowly, guarding the room that Daniel and the others were in, but otherwise just choosing targets of opportunity. Now, however, Tetora seemed rooted in one place and the others were acting as guards, keeping the fighting within the square but away from her.

"Incoming," Jack warned, and Daniel jolted, bringing his focus back away from the fight in time to see a bolt of energy hit one of the rat-people, sending it flying backwards and into a wall, where it dissolved into a shower of bubbles and... were those coins?

Teal'c lowered his staff weapon, and Daniel abruptly realized that he was standing almost on top of the Jaffa, too interested in seeing what was going on with the other people to realize that he'd been crowding Teal'c.

"Sorry,"

"It is no trouble, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c said mildly, "I, too, wish to know what our allies are capable of."

"Right," Daniel agreed, casting another glance out towards where glowing, thorny vines had wrapped around the giant rat, then taking a couple steps back.

Jack followed him back into the room, leaning back against the wall next to him with a casual air.

"All right Danny," He said, keeping his eyes on the doorway and Teal'c's back, "I know that look. What's going on?"

Daniel hesitated, massaging at the bridge of his nose as he tried to put his thoughts in order.

"I don't know," he said, and winced when there was a resounding crash from the other room. Teal’c shifted abruptly, the staff weapon firing several times in rapid succession, and a high pitched squeal cut off with the sound of coins hitting the ground.

“This place just feels weird,” he muttered finally, “almost like I should know it, but I know I don’t? It’s like… echoes, in the back of my head.”

“Something you’re remembering from when you were Ascended?” Jack asked, shifting a little, and Daniel shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he paused, “maybe? I don’t know, Jack, it’s just weird!”

“Well,” Jack smirked, “When your resident genius calls something ‘weird’ then you _know_ it’s unexplainable.”

“Shut up,” Daniel groaned, then scrubbed at his face with his hands and stood up to start pacing, just out of sight of the door.

“Point one, that girl, Tetora, she called herself a cleric,"

Jack frowned, "What, like one of those religious-y fanatics from one of those weird fantasy movies?"

"Sort of, yeah. The basic idea is that a person worships a god, and that god grants them abilities in line with what the god commands. The idea was popularized on Earth through a series of games," Daniel paused, squinting at the opposite wall, "Actually, and we’ll call this point two, she used a lot of phrases that I've heard some of the gamers on base use. So did Minori."

"Minori?" Jack asked, and Daniel waved him off.

"The girl who found us at first. Her name is Minori, and apparently she's something called a Kannagi, as well as the apprentice to one 'Lord Shiroe'."

"Lord Shiroe, huh?" Jack said, his tone skeptical, "She say anything about him?"

"No, she was a bit preoccupied trying to keep you alive until her guildmates arrived," Daniel said dryly, and Jack winced, then smiled wryly.

"Right. Any cha-"

A piercing shriek cut through what Jack was about to say, and he and Daniel scrambled over to Teal'c's side just in time to see the giant rat dissolve into bubbles and the remaining rat-people scatter, screaming, through the doorways around the room.

For a moment everything was quiet, then the boy in samurai armor let out a joyous whoop, and the air filled with laughter and congratulations as they all relaxed, sheathing weapons, dismissing the odd light or two, and, to all appearances, relaxing.

"Wow..." Sam murmured quietly, "That was fast."

"Too fast, d'you think?" Jack asked, and got a one shouldered shrug back.

"It could just mean they do this a lot." Daniel offered, then clamped his mouth shut as someone who could only be 'Lord Shiroe' looked in their direction and started over.

  


* * *

  


Shiroe sighed with relief when the plague spirit died, sending the remaining rat-men fleeing with terror. The fight hadn't been that long, but he didn't like taking on so many mobs with lowbies; especially after the raid they'd just finished.

Still, they'd gotten through it with no deaths, and although everyone seemed tired, they were all in good spirits.

Watching Tohya chatter excitedly to his sister, Shiroe smiled. The young samurai had done quite well, and Isuzu was really starting to come into her own along the bardic path she'd chosen. He'd have to find some way to reward them for their hard work. Maybe ask the Chief if he'd be willing to let the younger guild members chose dinner some night soon? That'd be a good group reward, but maybe individual rewards would be ap-

Someone coughed quietly next to his elbow, and Shiroe startled, glancing down to find Akatsuki looking pointedly over at the room they'd been doing their best to keep the Rat-men away from the whole fight.

Four people, three men and a woman, were clustered in the doorway, watching them.

"Tetora healed them all with no difficulty," Akatsuki told him quietly, "but my lord, there's something odd about the blond's character sheet. He looks human, but his race is... corrupted."

Shiroe tensed, his grip tightening on his staff as one hand came up to adjust his glasses. "Like the Genius?"

Akatsuki hesitated, then shrugged, scowling off to one side. "I don't know. I don't think so? It's difficult to explain."

"Well then," Shiroe said mildly, "I'll just have to see for myself. Let's go say hello."

It wasn't that far to the doorway, but somehow it was still long enough for Shiroe to start second guessing himself. Should he have put his staff away? Unequipped his cloak in an attempt to seem more personable? He knew that some Landers were unwilling to approach an adventurer in what passed as 'active' gear, but these people were dressed in military wear. Would they even recognize the significance? Or would they feel like he was condescending them? Were they Landers at all? Or-

Shiroe came to a halt and smiled, doing his best to be as nonthreatening as possible.

"Hi there, we heard you could use a hand. I'm Shiroe, guildmaster for Log Horizon."


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited July 19, 2018- removed reference to the Ori, adjusted dialogue to compensate.

_Colonel Jack O'Neill- lvl 66_

_Major Samantha Carter- lvl 65_

_Doctor Daniel Jackson- l̥̭̩̲͈̹̇̉͌̿͗̈́v̸͖̟̳̪̥̋̆͐͂̌̎̕͢͝ą̡͈̺̟̖̜̑͌̽̐͛̽̂͜͞s̴̢̧̳̪̖̬̭͇̓̈́́̈́͐̔̈́̆͒͝d̵̟̼̱̩̙̯̳̩̆̑̍̒̔̍͜͝͝k̶̮̱̞͈̙̹̭͕̀͛̍̏̌̚ļ̶̺̹͉͈̟̭̤̀̓̿̔͊͢ 1̷̧͉̠͕̺̍́͐͑̊̄̈͟9̰̞̼̝̜̞̯̾̆͂̇̽̒̐͘͘͢͞ͅ3̷̧̼͇͎̪͈̞͈̑͛͊̈́̿̄͂͗̕̚ͅ8̵̧̗͇̳̟̹̃̀̿̿̊̄4̴̧̨̠̼̞͋̋͋͒̔̐̑́͛̕5̨̡̣̰̦̘̩̉̄̈̊͌͟͡8̸̘͖͎̩̱̲͆̈́̃̈̿͛̆̽4̡̧̛͍͙̺̖̪̘̗̅͆̉̿̒̑̄7̶̲̟̼̗͈͓̯̹͍̈͊̉́̽̌͢͝͡5̷̘̰̭̻̪̼̉̐͋̃͛̎̎͋͡2̨̛̪̠̭͇̰̤̅̍̓͌̃͡͡ͅ4͖̫̖͖̝͋̒̔̿͂͗͘͝5̷̨̰̺̝̣̱͉̭̟̓̊̾̊̄̋͗̀͗͡2̡͓̣͊͊̄̅̒̌̈̓͢͟͞3̸̻̫̬̖͇͈͒̿̈͐̅̈̉͛4̶̠̰̘̻̗̥̣̩̘̀̒̄̃̐̚͡9̝͈͕͈̫̝̲̼͂̐̒̈́̈̈́̍̍̕͜͠5̡̛̰̰̩͈̼̗̱̆͂̊͌̿͑̕͘͢8̫͎̳̘͍͚̉͂̎̓͋̄̈́͢3̴̢̖̩̻̤͎̝̼̿͛̄̏͑4̸̧͇̳̼̳̐̃̃̅̌̒͆͠9̢̢̯͎̰͔̓̑̌̄̉̉͛̂5̴̣̳̱̱̬̲̰͇̤͌̊͊̆̂̆8̴̡̡̬̜̯̇͂̌͟͠7̶̨̞͉͕̼͍͈̃̈̈́̉̑͛̀͘͟͠͠3̶̼̞̻̻̺̮̓̒́͛̒͌͑̓͢͞4̩̼̦͚͉̣̾͑̓̋͠5̷̢̛̝͔̦̖̝̫̣̬͙̗͎̥͐͂̔͛̄̉͆̄͐̈͋̔̈̐̚.  
_

_Teal'c- lvl 71_

 

Shiroe ignored the icons over the strangers' heads with practiced ease. The Landers tended to get nervous if you addressed them by their names before being introduced, so most adventurers had learned to simply pretend that they couldn't see the names and levels of anyone that they hadn't been introduced to.

Ignoring the constant fluctuating of Doctor Jackson's level was going to be more of a challenge than he was used to.

"Jack O'Neill," the man stepped forward, holding out a hand to shake with an easy, friendly smile on his face.

It was such an oddly normal gesture, and so unexpected, that Shiroe paused for a second, thrown, then reached forward to complete the greeting.

"My team, Daniel Jackson, Sam Carter, and Teal'c."

Shiroe nodded a greeting, and rapidly named off his party members, following Jack's example and leaving off their classes.

If they wanted to introduce themselves more properly later, then they could.

"So what brings you all out to Shinjuku?" Naotsugu asked, his hands clasped behind his head as he peered around in the darkened room like he could find something worth coming down into the maze. "Level grinding?"

"Nah," Jack said casually, “just poking around. You know how us Tau’ri can be sometimes; always sticking our noses where they don’t belong.”

Puzzled, Shiroe frowned slightly and opened his mouth to ask about the unfamiliar word when light bloomed behind him and Sam inhaled sharply, her eyes wide.

Shiroe turned enough to see the little light spirits Minori had summoned floating in midair, then glanced back at the others. "Is there something wrong?"

"Is that normal?" Sam asked, taking an aborted half step forward like she wanted to get closer to the Firefly's Light so that she could examine it.

"What?" Minori asked, examining her spell as though looking for something odd about it.

"Your lights have faces," Sam said, "is that a normal part of that effect? How did you create the light in the first place? Does your staff have multiple effects built into it, or are you wearing other devices to create the shields that you were using before? Do yo-" Jack put a hand on her shoulder, and Sam's mouth snapped shut, abruptly realizing that all of the other group was watching her carefully.

"I'm sorry," she said, chagrined.

"That's okay," Minori said comfortingly, "Rodrick does the same thing, sometimes. And Master Shiroe, when he's trying to figure out a new spell."

"Mag-" Sam started, and Daniel stepped forward.

"So do your people often fight against those... rat people?"

Shiroe stifled a smile, a good idea of what exactly Sam had been about to say in his mind as he tilted his head from one side to the other in a 'sort of' motion.

"The rat-men aren't really a problem. Most Adventurers tend to avoid conflicts with them unless we've got a specific quest."

"They're good for grinding, though," Naotsugu interjected, and got a rude noise for his trouble from Akatsuki.

"The plague debuff makes it more trouble than it's worth. Goblins are much easier, and there's so many that you hardly even have to leave the Falls."

"So bring a cleric with you, and it's no trouble!"

"What's the point of partying up just to grind?!"

"The point is to have _fun_ , you know what that is, shorty?"

"Grinding is boring anyway, partying up doesn't make it any more fun, and _stop calling me short_!"

Shiroe sighed, then, out of sight of his bickering guildmates, held up three fingers, then two, then one, then- _'whang!'_

"My Lord, may I please knee this idiot in the face?"

"Anyway." Shiroe said, his voice firm as he purposely ignored both his guildmates and the quiet snickering from the man in front of him, "We should head up to the surface. The longer we stay down here, the better chance we have of the rat-men respawning in enough numbers to get brave."

"Well then," Jack said, clapping his hands once, "If you guys could just point us back in the direction of the Stargate, we'll get out of your hair."

Shiroe paused, and even Akatsuki and Naotsugu stopped bickering, a small ripple of quiet as each of the Adventurers turned the full force of their attention to the four strangers.

"The what?" Isuzu finally asked, frowning as she leaned on her polearm.

"Do you mean the nearest Fairy Ring?" Tetora asked, "Did someone from another server finally figure out the schedule for those?"

"Yeah, but the nearest ring is just outside Akihabara," Tohya objected, "why would these guys be all the way out here if they were looking for a Fairy Ring?"

"It's a big ring, on edge, with lots of symbols around the edges," Sam interrupted, "There a pedestal in front of it, with buttons with the same symbols on it, and another button in the center that looks like half a crystal ball."

"You might know it as the Chappa'ai?" Daniel added hopefully, and everyone paused again, thinking.

"Never heard of it," Naotsugu decided, and got a murmured chorus of agreement that made Jack groan.

"Maybe you could just guide us back to where you found us?" Sam tried, and, after a moment, Naotsugu shrugged.

"Worth a shot. We've still got some time before they start respawning. Shiroe?"

"We'll all go," Shiroe said, then, "has anyone let the others know that we've found them?"

"I can call Rudy," Isuzu offered, "I'm sure he'll let Master Nyanta know."

"I'll let Soujiro know," Naotsugu added, already tapping away at his interface, and Shiroe nodded, satisfied.

"We'll let Naotsugu take the lead," he said, thinking out loud, "Akatsuki-"

"I'll act as a scout again," she said, and Shiroe nodded, turning his attention to the strangers.

"We're a large group, so formation isn't too important, but you four should probably stay in the middle anyway, unless you remember the way as well?"

Daniel stepped forward, half raising one hand, "I wasn't affected by the rat-person bite, so I still remember where we were when Naotsugu and Minori found us. We should be able to get back to the gate from there."

"Good."

"Done!" Isuzu called, "Rudy let Chief Nyanta know, and he said that they're heading back to Akihabara now."

"Same," Naotsugu said, "But Soujiro wants you to meet up with him later for an explanation."

"That's fine," Shiroe agreed, and gestured for Naotsugu to lead the way.

  


This time the trip through the tunnels of Shinjuku Underground was nearly as different as it could be. Their group was large, and although the older, more experienced adventurers were keeping an eye out, the attitude of the younger players was infectious. Couple that with the light prying for information that the strangers were doing, and Shiroe wasn’t surprised that the group had taken on an air more suited to a stroll along one of the roads outside Akihabara.

Still, the easy, cheerful air was destined not to last, and it died a swift death when they reached the place that Daniel swore up and down should lead directly to the ‘Stargate’.

“This wall wasn’t here before,” Sam insisted, examining one of the corners closely, trying to find some hint of a crack, “Look, there’s one of my chalk marks. I know we came this way,”

“Maybe we got turned around?” Daniel said, and turned to head back the way they’d come, following the white chalk marks on the wall back to where they branched, one set in blue heading up, the other, still white, heading to the right.

The blood on the ground, scuff marks, and bullet holes led to an offshoot on the left, and Daniel stubbornly ignored them all, instead following the chalk marks all the way to where they cut off, then back again.

“I don’t suppose those rat- things can rearrange the tunnels around here,” Jack asked dryly, and Shiroe shook his head.

"The only elemental that rat shamans can summon is the Plague Spirit." he said, and Jack sighed.

"I was afraid you'd say that. Exactly that. Just the way you said it, even." For a moment he said nothing, staring at the wall with narrowed eyes as he thought. "Whaddaya think, is this wall load-bearing?"

Shiroe blinked, startled. "Um, probably not? I can't be sure, but I don't think it is, why?"

"Great," Jack started digging around in his pockets, letting his P90 hang. "Gather 'round, kids. We're gonna see if there's actually something behind that there wall."

"What are you going to do?" Tohya asked, peering into Jack's hands as he pulled a few tightly wrapped bundles of something that looked like colorless clay.

"Wait, is that c4!?" Tetora demanded, bounding over to get a closer look, "I've never seen it in real life before! Are you going to blow up the wall? For real?"

"Oh jeez," Naotsugu muttered, his eyes wide as he watched the bubbly idol geek out over the explosives in the increasingly bemused man's hands.

"Agreed," Shiroe said, then, "Minori, I have a feeling we might need a barrier or two."

"I'll have one ready," Minori agreed, watching curiously as Sam and Jack slapped c4 into place and primed it.

"All right folks," Jack said, "back around the corner so we don't all get blown up."

Once everyone was ensconced securely around the corner and out of sight, a shimmering red and gold barrier flashed into existence, covering the entirety of the entrance to that side of the hallway, and Jack paused, shooting the girl an appraising look before he turned his attention back to the detonator in his hand.

"Fire in the hole!" Jack announced, and hit a button on the detonator.

The explosion rocked the hallway and Minori's barrier shattered, allowing dust and grit and rubble to fill the air.

Coughing, they all retreated further down the hallway, wiping streaming eyes on whatever clean parts of clothing they could reach and waiting for the ringing in their ears to die away before going to see if they'd broken through the wall.

“Huh…” Jack’s voice was casual. “Would you look at that,”

‘That’ was a three foot deep divot in the wall, edges ragged where the explosion had bounced off the packed earth and stone behind it and back into the hallway.

“Welp, that was a bust,” he said mildly, clapping his hands against his thighs.

Shiroe watched as Daniel reached into the hole, feeling around as though he thought there might be a gap somewhere that he couldn’t see.

"Maybe the rat-people filled in the room?" Sam tried, but Daniel was shaking his head almost before she'd finished.

"No, come look at this. It's all too tightly packed. If I didn't know better, I'd say that this wall has been here for centuries, at least."

  


“If your stargate is gone,” Shiroe said, stepping forward, “may I offer our assistance in getting out of here? We can at least get you to Akihabara. Someone there might be able to help you, or at least be able to offer more information."

“That’d be great,” Daniel said, ignoring the sharp look Sam shot him, and stepping non-too-subtly on Jack’s foot when he opened his mouth to object. “Unless things that go missing like this tend to turn up quickly?”

“As far as I know,” Shiroe said, “nothing goes missing like that. One of the other guildmasters might know of something similar to this, but I’ve never heard of it.”

“Then let’s go meet with your other guildmasters,” Jack said, and gestured for Shiroe to lead the way.

Getting out of the tunnels was almost as easily said as done, although the amiable air from before had dissolved. Still, Shiroe had a feeling that the four strangers would have no choice but to relax under the relentless barrage of cheerful friendliness from Tetora, Minori, Tohya, and Isuzu.

The bright summer sun washed away most of the damp chill from the tunnels, and Shiroe took a moment to stretch, adjusting his bag so that he could more comfortably perch on one of the large chunks of concrete that littered the area around the entrance to Shinjuku while the strangers looked around.

Their reactions to the concrete and tile that became more visible the closer one got to the entrance had been a mixture of confused and irritated. It was obvious that they hadn’t expected to see such modern looking building materials in a building that was so shattered and run down. It was equally obvious that they recognized it for what it was in the same way that Adventurers would, rather than as a remnant from the Alv, the way a Lander would.

  


He’d have to find a way to speak to one of them privately before they got to Akihabara. The conclusions he was drawing weren’t something he wanted to discuss where it was possible that any one of the spies from the various Lander or Adventurer factions was listening in. If he was wrong, then fine, he was wrong and there was little to no harm done. But if he were right…

Well.

“Yo, Shiroe!” Naotsugu waved at him from over next to the road, “Let’s go, slowpoke!”

“Coming!”

* * *

 

 

Watching the strangers’ reactions to the dilapidated roads and broken down skyscrapers was enlightening. Also kind of funny, Shiroe admitted to himself, but keeping half an ear on their whispered conversation was enough to keep any sign of amusement off his face. His number one theory was looking more and more accurate.

It wasn’t until he fell back to walk behind everyone, casually catching Jack’s eye as he did, that the hissed conversation was put on hold and the four split up as casually as they could.

Shiroe smiled wryly at the older man, recognizing an information gathering mission when he saw it.

“So…” Jack said casually, “You guys heard we needed a hand, huh? Who’d you hear from?”

Ah, he’d thought they’d missed that little tidbit. Apparently not. “Your radios were misbehaving, and we happened to be at the radio tower in Shibuya. I think our frequencies overlapped, and you ended up broadcasting to us, rather than the rest of your team.”

“Huh…” Jack looked thoughtful, and Shiroe took a deep breath, then threw caution to the winds.

“You’re from Earth, aren’t you.”

Jack didn’t react, and Shiroe pressed on.

“You recognize the style of these buildings, you know about roads, and concrete, and even the cars that we’re passing. These aren’t just ‘artifacts from the Alv’ to you, so you aren’t a Lander, and we aren’t having to stop and explain our terminology or rephrase things every few sentences, so you’re obviously familiar with the underlying concepts behind our word choices. My only question is, how did you get here, and can we use it to get back?”

For a moment they walked in silence, then, “So what's your story then," Jack asked, "how'd you end up here? You just woke up one day and boom, you're on a different planet? You're looking pretty well adjusted for someone who shouldn't even know that other planets exist. And that's not to mention all the glowy magic stuff."

Shiroe blinked, glancing sideways at Jack, then switching his staff to his other hand.

“I think you misunderstood me,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean that I’m the only one from Earth. I meant we _all_ are.”

Jack frowned, but Shiroe cut him off before he could say anything.

“And actually, as far as I know, alternate dimension was the theory most of us were working with. Just, hear me out, and then I’ll answer any questions that I can, okay?”

Jack nodded, and Shiroe took a deep breath, fixed his eyes on the horizon, and started to talk.

“Last spring, the game Elder Tale released it’s tenth expansion pack…”

  


Shiroe told the entire story, from sitting down at his computer to log on for the release, to waking up in Akihabara as Shiroe, to buying the guild building in an attempt to force the guilds to start policing themselves, to the quests to buy all of Yamato, to the raid they’d been on earlier that same day. One by one, the other players drifted back, adding in their own comments on what had happened when, and giving things a little more depth. Sam, Daniel, and Teal’c had been listening the whole time, but once the other adventurers had started adding things, they’d stopped pretending not to be listening and drawn closer, occasionally asking questions for clarification.

“So you see,” Shiroe finally said, just as the walls of Akihabara came into view. “All of us Adventurers are originally from earth, and we’re trying to find a way to go back. Many of us are not adapting well.”

“Yeah,” Tohya said, and shivered abruptly. “like those knights,”

“Those guys were scary,” Isuzu agreed, rubbing her arms as if to ward off a chill.

“The Oddysea Knights are obsessed with getting home,” Shiroe explained, and paused in the middle of the road, “You have to understand. When we die, we end up in a place where we see glimpses of our old lives. Of home. These people have refused to adapt to their new lives to the point where their only current goal is to fight and die as many times as possible, as quickly as possible, just so that they can have that brief glimpse of home. The problem is, every time we die, we lose a little of that life. A memory here, a memory there. I’m worried that, without a way for those people to go home soon, by the time we do figure out a way, there won’t be enough left of their old selves to go home.”

“They already look like zombies,” Tohya said, looking away, “and that moving cathedral of theirs creeps me out big time.”

“I understand that you might not fully believe us,” Shiroe said, pulling their attention off the boy and back to him, “but take some time, walk around Akihabara and talk to other Adventurers. Talk to the Landers. The difference should be obvious, and I’m sure you’ll find some way of corroborating our story.”

“But you probably shouldn’t go around saying that you’re fresh from Earth,” Naotsugu said seriously, “You’d get mobbed, and people’d freak out!”

“It’d be easiest if we could pass you off as other adventurers, from one of the other servers,” Shiroe admitted, and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Still, it’s your choice. We can’t stop you from saying or doing anything.”

“I don’t mind blending in,” Daniel said, shifting his pack a little.

“How are we going to do that, though?” Sam asked, looking around the group, “Our clothes are obviously different, and from what you said, guns are still outside of this planet's technological capability."

"For the moment, yes," Shiroe agreed, "and to be honest, I'd be far happier if it stayed that way."

“And that’s not even mentioning his icon,” Tohya added, looking at the air above Daniel’s head,

“Yeah,” Isuzu agreed, glancing up and then away, “I’ve been trying to ignore it but it’s honestly making me feel sick.”

“Don’t look at his sheet, then,” Akatsuki said wryly, then smiled as Naotsugu promptly did so and turned green.

“Wow, that’s one hell of a glitch,” he managed, and had to wave away the interface.

“What’s wrong with Danny?” Jack asked, looking above Daniel's head.

“Nothing’s wrong, exactly,” Minori tried, and Tetora leaned on her shoulder, grinning up at Jack.

“It’s just that his level is a scrolling mess of numbers, and his race is a completely incomprehensible mess, and looking at it makes us feel like barfing all over the place!” She chirped, and Shiroe grimaced, then nodded when Jack looked at him incredulously.

“I did mention that we could see icons,” he said apologetically, and Jack threw his hands up in the air.

“Is there even a point in trying to blend in, then?” he demanded, and Naotsugu patted him sympathetically on the shoulder.

“Sure there is, man. We’ll just say you’re from the North American server. Hardly anyone keeps track of what’s going on on the other servers, and there’s custom class variations per server. I bet hardly anyone’ll notice, if they even care.”

“We can probably borrow gear from Charasin, like you did with Princess Lenessia, right?” Minori offered, “I can run ahead and ask,”

“That’d be great, Minori,” Shiroe said, smiling at his apprentice, who flushed happily. “We’ll meet you at the guild house.”

Minori fumbled a small whistle out of her satchel, then took a few steps away and blew hard into it. A distant whinny answered the whistle, and Shiroe hid a smile as the strangers watched an apparently fully tacked up stray horse barge up to Minori and start demanding ear scritches.

“You all are welcome to stay with us in our guild house, or you can try to find other lodgings. I’m sure The Crescent Moon Alliance would be happy to put you up, or one of the other guilds,” Shiroe said, and stepped forward to hold the reins so that Minori could mount up.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Sam asked, watching as Minori waved at her brother then urged the horse into a gallop and rode off.

“It’s fine.” Akatsuki said, her voice flat. “My lord wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Tohya grinned, and Isuzu elbowed him playfully.

“If you ask me, I’d try to stay with the West Wind Brigade; their baths are still the best in the city. Seriously, it’s been almost a year! How has no one else figured out how to do a proper bathhouse?!”

Shiroe sighed with quiet relief as his guildmates took over talking to the four newcomers, filling them in on various aspects of the city and guilds, and letting him drift to the back of the group as they started on their way to the home again.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which SG-1 takes a tour, and a familiar-unfamiliiar face is seen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DOUBLE UPDATE!!  
> Sorry about the long wait, but I had a hard time with this chapter. Still, it's here now, and so is chapter 5!

Minori met them at the door to the Log Horizon guild house with a wide smile. She’d changed out of her raid gear into something that Shiroe vaguely remembered her having worn before, and, judging from that and the piles of clothing on the couches in the living room, she’d been waiting on them for a while.

“Everything here should resize to fit you,” Minori explained, “or at least, that’s what Charasin said. Um, I tried to pick stuff that would look a little more casual? It’s more weird to see someone in their armor and stuff without a weapon around, and honestly I wasn’t sure what you might want, so this was just easier.”

“Jeez Minori, how’d you get him to give you all of this? I know he was willing to help out with Lenessia, but he knew what was going on for that,” Naotsugu lifted up a shirt, examining it like he was seeing how it’d fit himself.

“Oh, it wasn’t a big deal. I just said I’d help out as his assistant for the next festival again. Apparently I was a big help last time, so he agreed right away!” the pleased smile on Minori’s face made Shiroe smile back, and he nodded approvingly at her.

“Good thinking. Well done, Minori. Naotsugu, Akatsuki, why don’t you show our guests where they can change. I need to check in with Nyanta and Soujiro. The rest of you, try and get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“Roger,”

“Of course, my lord.”

Sam watched as the guildmaster retreated into a different room, then returned to picking through the piles of clothing.

“Why do you call him ‘my lord’?” She asked, running her fingers over the pleats in a skirt before setting it aside. “Did he ask you to?”

Naotsugu guffawed, lacing his fingers behind his head and grinning down at Akatsuki.

“Nah. Shorty here started doing that all on her own.”

“He saved me from a fate most dire,” Akatsuki said stiffly, “and we had partied together sometimes, before the Catastrophe. It is the most appropriate form of address from a sworn ninja to her liege lord.”

“What she means,” Naotsugu said, grinning slightly, “is that some people liked to play characters of other genders. Short stack here was playing as a dude, and when we got here-”

“I could barely move,” Akatsuki interrupted, “because I was two feet taller than I am in the real world. My proportions were completely off, and I had nearly fallen out of the building I was in three times before I managed to get your attention. I would have been easy prey for any griefer that came along, and being dragged out of the zone doesn’t count as combat for the purposes of the Royal Guard. Lord Shiroe had a potion that enabled me to resume my proper gender and, more importantly, proportions more in line with what I was used to. I owe him a great debt that I am unsure if I can ever repay.”

Naotsugu grimaced, then nodded. “Yeah, those potions are hella rare. Still, I hadn’t thought about that other stuff. The way you were talking before, it sounded like you just didn’t want to stay a dude.”

“I didn’t, but had nothing else been a problem I wouldn’t have brought it up.” Akatsuki said simply, and turned her attention back to Sam.

“I call him my lord because I want to, and to remind others that Lord Shiroe is not without those to defend him. He allows others to paint him as a villain as long as it accomplishes his aims in keeping people safe and happy.”

“Yeah,” Tohya said unhappily, flopping sideways into one of the empty chairs. “you’re probably gonna hear a lot of that sort of stuff while you’re out walking around.”

“But it’s not true, I swear!” Minori exclaimed, “Master Shiroe is a really good person! He saved us from Hamelin when he didn’t have to, and he helped put together the festivals and the Round Table Conference, and I don’t know why everyone is so mean to him all the time, it doesn’t make any sense!”

“Easy there,” Naotsugu said, resting one hand on Minori’s shoulders. “It’s just how it’s always been. The people who matter know what kind of person Shiroe is, and we’ll protect him, okay?”

“Right!” Minori agreed, clenching a determined fist.

“Right, right, defend the nice guildmaster from everyone else. Gotcha,” Jack said, and held up a bundle of clothing. “You said something about a place to change?”

“Yeah, come on.” Naotsugu said, “you guys can use my room.”

“Oh, hang on,” Daniel said, and dug around in the nearest pile of clothes for a second before following Jack and Naotsugu. Teal’c simply plucked the two nearest articles of clothing off the top of the pile and followed as well.

“I guess I’m ready too,” Sam said, clutching her selections awkwardly.

“This way.” Akatsuki said, “you can use my room.”  


The enormous tree trunk inside the building wasn’t the weirdest thing Sam had seen, but it was still unusual enough that Sam had to force herself to pay attention as Akatsuki led her through the building and to a door.

“I’ll wait out here.” she said, and Sam nodded in thanks as she entered the room.  


The room wasn’t anything spectacular. Actually, Sam would have called it positively spartan. Still, there were a few personal touches here and there that indicated that yes, this was someone’s personal room; a tea set on the bedside table, a small doll on the bed, a glimpse of clothing through a partially open closet door.

No prying, Sam reminded herself firmly. These people were still potential allies, and Akatsuki hadn’t had to let her use her room to change. With that in mind, Sam turned her attention to the clothing she’d brought in with her and got to work.

As promised, the clothing resized to fit as soon as Sam started trying to put it on, and when she opened the door again she was in a pair of pants that were almost jeans and a dark green tank top that looked like it had been paired with the semi-sheer, pale green shoulder wrap that had been in the same pile.

Her BDUs were stuffed into her backpack, and, as much as she hated the idea, she’d disassembled her P90 and packed it away as well, hiding several key pieces in different pockets in her pack.

Say what you will about security, but there were too many children around for her to feel anything like comfortable with leaving it assembled and ready to go.  


“Where should I put my pack?” Sam asked, peering around the edge of the door.

Akatsuki pushed away from the wall, glancing her over once before beckoning her back down the hall.

“You can either keep it with you or leave it here. Nobody’s going to care about a mismatched bag, because Dazaneg’s is only customizable once. They’ll just assume it fits your usual gear. If you leave it here, that’s fine too. No one will mess with it.”

“Good to know, thanks.”

  


Back in the living room, Daniel was already waiting, his pack sitting at his feet and ignored as he looked over a large sheet of parchment.

“Ah, Sam, there you are!” Daniel smiled distractedly over at her, and Sam joined him, perching on the arm of the couch so that she could look over his shoulder as Akatsuki vanished through the front door.

“Hey. What’s this? And where’s Jack and Teal’c?”

“Naotsugu is trying to convince Jack to leave his gun behind.” Daniel said, glancing around the room, “I think Teal’c was staying for moral support. Isuzu gave me this before she headed to bed. She said it was a map of Akihabara from one of the festivals a while ago.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s going to be a hard sell,” Sam agreed, and leaned back a little, examining the supports of the ceiling above them. Then, “So what do you think?”

Daniel paused, turning away from his perusal of the map to give her his full attention.

“It’s likely.” He admitted, “From what I can tell, they’re speaking a pretty modern version of Japanese, and… well, do you remember that big media circus about a year ago? All those disappearances, with no sign of struggles, and no hint of where they might have gone? The only thing anyone could find in common across the board was that every victim looked to have been on their computer at the time of their disappearance.”

Sam paused, her gaze going distant as she tried to remember.

“Vaguely?” She tried, “I wasn’t really paying much attention to the news last year.”

“Oh, right,” Daniel said, “You had that thing with Anise, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded, “It was a nightmare.”

Daniel nodded, then turned back to looking at the map, “I want to talk to some of these ‘Landers’, and some of the other Adventurers. Get a better idea of what’s going on, you know?”

Sam nodded, then reached over his shoulder to trace one of the streets on the map he was holding. “So where were you thinking about starting?”

“Oh, well, Shiroe mentioned the Cathedral,” Daniel started, pointing to the building labeled ‘Cathedral’, “and I was wondering if that had any religious significance for Landers, or if it was only significant for Adventurers, so I figured we could head there, first. Then, there’s this,” he pointed again, this time at something closer to the center, “a tree that Isuzu mentioned is used as a sort of message board? That could be interesting…”

For a few minutes the two of them plotted out a route that would take them through what was marked as some of the most populated areas, with points of interest that would hopefully give them enough information to determine if, like Shiroe had said, all of the Adventurers actually were from Earth.

Left unsaid, however, was what exactly they were going to do about it if it turned out to be true. Without a Stargate, _they_ were just as trapped as the Adventurers.

* * *

  


The city was… jarring, to say the least.

So much of it looked like any modern-day city on Earth (albeit with more vines, moss, and trees) that seeing people walking around in armor with various weapons in plain view was giving them whiplash.

Most of them, at least.

“This is incredible!” Daniel enthused, twisting and turning to keep a tall, distinctly feline person in his sights, “It’s obvious that the city itself was fairly bad off, but the adventurers seem to have reclaimed as much of it as they needed.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, peering at a window display of rows of small whistles that looked almost like the one Minori had used earlier, “but did you notice? They left the trees where they grew.”

“Probably a good thing, too,” Daniel agreed, “It wouldn’t be easy to cut down a tree without ruining the building around it, would it?”

“Eh,” Jack shrugged, looking around with his hands in his pockets, “it’s not that hard. You just gotta go from the top down and keep anything big from landing on the roof.”

The group moved on, wandering down the streets and listening to snatches of conversations as they passed.

“The People of the Land and the Adventurers mingle freely,” Teal’c observed, watching a woman in a plain brown dress and white apron scold a wolf-eared man in heavy armor.

The man grimaced and started apologizing, and even though they couldn’t hear the conversation, it was obvious that the woman had no fear him.

“How can you tell she’s a Lander?” Sam asked curiously, and Teal’c looked around the street they were on, scanning it as he spoke.

“The Adventurers all move like trained warriors,” he said, nodding politely at a young woman as she passed, “Lord Shiroe professed to be a student in his life on earth, and yet he fights with ease, directing his companions with the precision of a studied battle master. The People of the Land move like your civilians on earth. They have not fought, or have not fought often.”

“Man’s got a point,” Jack said after a moment of scanning the street, “Look, there.” He nodded at a girl who looked no older than twelve, with blonde hair in pigtails and a chef’s outfit on. “She’s an Adventurer.”

“She’s a child,” Sam said, halfway to horrified, and Daniel waved her off absently.

“Shiroe already mentioned that there were a lot of kids, and I think Jack’s right. The Adventurers tend to dress a lot more… flamboyantly? Compared to the People of the Land.”

“And actually,” An oddly familiar voice interjected from behind them, “She’s seventeen. And level 96. And could kick your butts. Is there a reason you’re checking out my baby cousin?”

Eyes wide, Sam whirled in place, turning to see the wolf-eared man they’d seen being scolded standing behind them, hands on his armor clad hips.

Grey eyes went wide, and he blurted “Major Carter?!”, then flushed bright red and clapped his hands over his mouth as he abruptly realized who was standing in front of him.

“Colonel O’Neill? Teal’c? Doctor Jackson!? What are you all doing here? How did- wait so if you’re here, then… oh my god.”

Bemused, Sam watched the armored young man take a couple of steps to the side, then sit down abruptly, his face going white as he stared up at the four of them like he’d seen a ghost.

“This is really real, then,” he mumbled, “oh my god I’m not in a coma, SG-1 is here and that means this is real and I’m screwed, things always go tits-up when you guys get involved and oh my god I’ve been awol for over a year I’m gonna get court-martialed, my career is _over_ , holy shit, this is so, so bad oh my-”

“Kid,” Jack interrupted, squatting down to be on eye level, “breathe. You’re gonna pass out if you keep it up.”

“Yessir,” he said, nodding rapidly, and inhaled deeply, holding it for a few seconds before blowing it out in an enormous rush.

“Better?” Jack asked, and he nodded again, the flush starting to return to his cheeks.

“Yessir.”

“Good.” Jack studied him for a minute, then shook his head. “Nope, I’ve got nothing. Mind introducing yourself?”

“Lieutenant Wilson Young,” he replied, his ears cautiously rising out of where they’d flattened themselves to his skull, “with SG-16.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot to her hairline, and she listened carefully as he reeled off his identifying information on one breath and ending with, “here I go by Vecna.”

“Well, Lieutenant,” Jack said, standing up with a small grunt and offering him his hand, “How’d you come to be all the way out in Japan? We were told that America had its own server.”

Lieutenant Young let Jack pull him to his feet, then winced, glancing around, and Sam frowned.

“I played on the Yamato server to keep in touch with my cousins, sir.” he said stiffly, and Daniel frowned.

“How about that,” Jack said musingly, “what do you think, Lieutenant, do you know anywhere we can sit and relax, and you can give us a rundown on the situation?”

Lieutenant Young winced again, then glanced down the street over at where his cousin was, and Daniel made a small sound of comprehension.

“Is there something wrong with using your rank?” He asked, and the Lieutenant shifted uncomfortably.

“Not exactly?” he tried, “It’s just, nobody talks about the real world, here. It’s kind of, well, _rude_ , to call someone by their real life name, or to talk about that sort of thing in public.”

“Wait, are you saying that talking about earth is, what, _taboo?_ ” Sam blurted, and Lieutenant Young winced, looking off to one side awkwardly.

“It’s not like it’s illegal or anything, but when we first got here things were really hard, and talking about home made it worse. Keeping to internet rules made it easier, so we’ve just kind of stuck with it. Now that you’re here, though, that’s all going to change! Where’s the Stargate? When do we leave?”

Sam hesitated, biting her lip, and Daniel shifted uncomfortably.

“About that,” Jack drawled, his voice wry.

The lieutenant threw his hands up into the air.

“Of course,” he said, exasperated, “Of course I’m getting caught up in an SG-1 ‘adventure.’ I should have expected it when I first saw you, but I didn’t and now here we are. Well.” he paused, then “I can’t give you a sit-rep now. I promised my cousin I’d take her shopping, and I was already late before all this. Where are you staying?”

Sam glanced sideways at Jack, then answered for all of them. “I think Log Horizon offered to put us up for the time being, but that could change.”

“With the villain in glasses?” Vecna looked surprised, then shrugged. “Why not. I’ll stop by tonight and fill you in on what I can, okay? Great, see you later!”

And without another word, he turned on his heel and darted down the street to where the blonde girl was still standing, impatiently tapping her foot.

Sam blinked after him, stunned.

“Talk about your culture shock,” Jack muttered, and scrubbed his hand over his face.

Exploring the rest of the city lost it’s luster after that, and the four of them found themselves back at the Log Horizon guild house only a few hours after they’d left, sitting in silence on the couches in the empty living room.  


“It makes sense, in a way,” Daniel offered, breaking the silence, and Jack scoffed.

“No, think about it,” Daniel insisted, “they’ve been here for about a year, right? But everyone still calls earth the ‘real world’. Even Shiroe, who made a point of saying that they’d had to accept that this was reality, talked about the ‘real world’, and ‘reality’.”

“It’s a society wide case of denial,” Sam realized, and Daniel pointed at her, nodding approvingly.

“Right! They’re clinging to the rules of the game as they know it, because as long as they can still think of it as the game, then they might one day wake up to find that it’s all been a dream!”

“But it’s not,” Jack pointed out, and Daniel waved him off.

“On some level they probably know that. The fact that they laid down laws, and work on enforcing them, as well as their relationship with the People of the Land shows that; but there’s a lot of layers to this sort of denial, and who knows how long it’d take to break through all of them.”

“So what,” Sam said, “a year away from SGC and a career Air Force man reacts to seeing a superior officer like that?”

“Not that I’m offended,” Jack put in mildly, “but it was weird.”

“Ah!” Daniel said triumphantly, “But that’s the thing! Think about it, if this is a game, then you aren’t his superior officer. His guildmaster is, if he’s in a guild. Or, alternately, he’s a free agent. Add in the fact that we were breaking a societal taboo, and walking all over his denial just by existing, and of course we got the reaction we did! He didn’t have any other way to respond!”

“Huh…” Sam leaned back in her seat, fiddling with a pencil she’d found as she thought. “It makes a certain sense when put that way…”

“So what are we supposed to do about it?” Jack asked, and Daniel shrugged,

“Nothing? There’s not a whole lot we can do about it. Eventually the denial will break down on it’s own, and, to be honest, I’m not sure if trying to force it is a good idea.”

“It’s not,”

The new voice made Sam jump, and the pencil flew out of her hand and bounced across the room, rolling to a stop a few feet away from the feet of a tall person with the head and fur of a black and white cat.

“Sorry about that, but you’re right,” a couple of steps took him over to the pencil, and he scooped it up and offered it back to Sam. “May I join you? I think I can shed a little more light on the situation.”

“Feel free,” Jack said, and Daniel scooted over a little to make room for the cat-man on the couch.

“My name,” he said, settling in to the open seat “is Nyanta. I’m a werecat, and a Swashbuckler. Shiroe-icchi mentioned that he told you about Suskino?”

Sam nodded, absently noting the slight emphasis on the word ‘is’, “He said that things were bad, but that another guild moved up there to keep the peace and it’s looking like it’s getting better?”

Nyanta nodded, “That’s right, nya~. I was there during the apocalypse. It was a mess. A lot of people were in denial, and they did a lot of crazy stuff. A lot of things were broken. A few People of the Land were killed. The leader of the main guild up there, Demiqas, he went a little crazy. William Massachusetts helped him get his head on straight, and I heard he settled down more when he got married, but Suskino is still a bit of a mess.”

“Why?” Sam asked, leaning forward a little, “What happened?”

“The People of the Land didn’t respawn.” Nyanta said simply, “One of the people that was killed was a bartender. He was there in the game. Always said the same things, and he was always there. As an NPC, he was untouchable. But suddenly, the game was real. You could reach out and touch the NPCs. Hurt them, too, if they weren’t doing something they’d been told to. Someone accidentally killed him, and when he didn’t respawn, well, people got scared. It was too real.”

“Is that when Demiqas’ guild took over?” Daniel asked, and Nyanta nodded.

“People wanted someone with answers, and Demiqas was loud, and confident, and absolutely sure that everything would go back to normal in a few days. Brigandia’s membership boomed, and Suskino imploded.”

“Wow…” Jack muttered, and Sam sighed, leaning back in her seat again.

“Okay, but that was all within the first few weeks, right?” she said, “So why are people still trying to treat this whole thing like a game?”

Nyanta shrugged. “Some aren’t. I’m not, but then, it’s hard to deny reality when it stares at you in the mirror every day, nya~. Still, it’s hard for them. I’ve seen people when it finally sinks in, and it’s not pretty. They get depressed, and then they get angry. A lot of fights’ve been breaking out, lately.” he shrugged again. “It might not happen soon, but eventually calling earth ‘the real world’ will just be a colloquialism, rather than a symbol of something we still haven’t managed to admit to ourselves.”


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner and a show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the SECOND chapter of a DOUBLE UPDATE! If you haven't read the chapter before this, please do so!  
> In other news, my mom was just diagnosed with cancer. As you can imagine, this is stressing me the hell out. My writing regularity may suffer, it may not. We'll see.  
> Thanks for your comments, and your patience. I appreciate both more than you guys can imagine.

Vecna’s visit didn’t make the situation any easier to swallow, but, along with the snacks he’d brought as a hosting gift, he did provide a lot of valuable backstory; explaining the various races and classes, and even going so far as to invite them all out to watch his guild’s morning drills.

Jack and Teal’c, of course, accepted immediately, but Daniel begged off.

“I want to get a look at the Fairy Rings,” he explained, and Vecna looked surprised,

“No one knows the schedule for them right now,” He warned, “so try not to step inside or you could end up on a completely different server. I thought you’d be more interested in the inter-city gate, though. I always thought they looked more like a Stargate than the Fairy Rings did.”

“The inter-city whats?” Sam asked, and Vecna leaned forward a bit.

“Gates,” He said, “There’s one in every Adventurer city, but they’re out of commission right now and no one knows why. They’re big, made of metal, and there’s glyphs around the edges that you’re supposed to use to tell the gate which city you want to go to. Akihabara’s is out of the way a bit, but it’s not hard to find.”

“Rodrick’s guild is studying it,” Minori said, stifling a yawn as she wandered into the room, her eyes half lidded. “He thinks that the problems we’ve been having with long range telepathy is the same thing that’s keeping the gates from working.”

Vecna raised one eyebrow, “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” Minori yawned again, plopping onto the couch next to Sam. “they’re doing all sorts of weird experiments. I think they’re trying to use it as a focus for summoning, or something. He kept talking about resonant frequencies and sine waves…”

Bemused, Sam looked down as Minori slid sideways until she was leaning against her shoulder, her sentence trailing off into incomprehensible mumbling that soon faded into the heavy breathing of someone deeply asleep.

“Huh.”

Tohya poked his head through a doorway and looked around, perking up with he spotted them, “Master Nyanta wants to know if you’re staying for dinner,” he called, and Vecna’s eyes widened.

“It’s that late already?”

Hurriedly, he stood, absently patting himself down to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything before nodding at all of them.

“Doctor Jackson, Major Carter, it was great to see you. Colonel, Teal’c I’ll swing by at, say, 8, and show you where we run drills?”

“Sounds good,” Jack said, and stood, following Vecna to the door and watching for a moment before closing it against the cooler night air. “What’re we having?” he asked Tohya, who perked up and opened the door wider so that Jack could join him in the kitchen.

Sam nudged Minori gently, and, when the sleeping girl didn’t even flinch, edged out from under her and quietly went to stand in the kitchen doorway, watching.

“Master Nyanta is making curry!” Tohya was beaming, “And tomorrow Master Shiroe said that we’d been doing so well that we could choose dinner!”

“You’ll still have to agree on something you _all_ want,” Nyanta warned from his post at the stove, giving a simmering pot a cursory stir.

“Yeah,” Naotsugu agreed from the table, “no bullying Rudy into agreeing with whatever you say, y’know?”

“We wouldn’t!” Tohya protested, handing Jack a handful of cutlery, and Sam hid a smile behind her hand as she watched Naotsugu wink at Nyanta behind Tohya’s back.

“Seriously though,” Isuzu said, pulling plates down out of a cupboard and starting to line them up on the counter, “aside from normal food, what does Rudy even _like_?”

“Why don’t you ask him, nya~” Nyanta suggested, giving the girl an arch look, and Isuzu paused, then shrugged, grinning impishly.

“I guess if we want to do things the _easy_ way...”

“We do,” Nyanta told her firmly. “Unless you want another misunderstanding like the one with the baths?”

Brown eyes widened, and Isuzu flushed. “Right. No thanks. We’ll ask.”

Tohya snickered, handing Jack a handful of cutlery before reaching up to start pulling down cups.

“Here, can you take these upstairs? We usually eat on the roof if it’s nice out,”

“I can help, too” Sam offered, and was handed the glasses with such promptness that she suspected Tohya had just been waiting for her to offer.

“It’s at the top of the stairs,” he told them, and the two of them headed up with their small burdens.

  


Dinner turned out to be a loud affair. With the entire guild present and accounted for, stories about the attempted rescue missions were traded, picked apart, and, occasionally, laughed at.

It was, Sam admitted privately to herself, one of the oddest debriefs she’d ever attended, but, judging from Shiroe’s quiet attentiveness and Naotsugu and Nyanta’s willingness to pick apart flaws in thinking or strategy, not one of the worst.

The fact that the curry was delicious helped, she thought, spooning up another bite and watching as one of the younger guild members, Rundelhaus Code, acted out a part of his story, standing a little way from the table and gesturing grandly as he described something that one of his partymates had done.

Something green flickered into view above his head, and Sam blinked.

_Rundelhaus Code- lvl 58_

As she watched, a bar popped into view underneath the words, and filled with a gradient of color from pale yellow to green.

Sam blinked again, then put down her spoon and scrubbed at her eyes before peering suspiciously at Rundelhaus again.

It was still there.

“Sam? Are you okay?”

Jack was looking over at her, a small frown on his face, and as Sam focused on him, the same thing popped into view over his head.

_Colonel Jack O’Neill- lvl 66_

“I think something’s wrong,” She said, frowning, then looked past Jack at the trunk of the tree and relaxed as the bar and words faded from view.

“How so?” The words were relaxed, but Sam could see how his shoulders had tensed, and the conversation at their end of the table had quieted as their older hosts turned their attention toward her.

“I’m seeing things.” She reported, “words, in midair over your head, and over his.”

She nodded in Rundelhaus’ direction, and Shiroe leaned back a little, his eyes narrowing as he looked between the two.

“You can see icons now?” Naotsugu blurted, and Sam frowned.

“What?”

“Describe what you’re seeing, exactly,” Shiroe requested, watching her intently, “Look at me. What does it say?”

Sam glanced at Jack, who gave her a half shrug, then nodded. Might as well play along for now and see where it went.

Obediently, she looked at the guildmaster and squinted as the words popped into view.

“Shiroe, level ninety-three, _”_ she read. “HP, one thousand one hundred sixty-two. MP, twelve thousand nine hundred ninety-six.”

“Oh.” Shiroe looked nonplussed. “well, that’s certainly odd. Absolutely correct, yes, but still odd. Nothing to worry about,” he added quickly, “it’s definitely normal. Just, normal for Adventurers.”

“Didn’t you say that you could see them from the very beginning?” Daniel asked, leaning forward, and Shiroe nodded, his face pensive,

“We could,” he said, “right away. You couldn’t see them at all before?”

“No,” Sam confirmed, and Shiroe looked at the others.

“What about you,” he asked, “anything new?”

Jack shook his head, “I got nothin’.”

“It’s a matter of focus,” Sam said helpfully, “I didn’t see anything until I was looking at someone directly. If my eyes aren’t focused on anyone, it goes away.”

Obligingly, Jack stared intently at her for a few moments, then shook his head again. “Nada. Daniel? Teal’c?”

Both of them had taken Sam’s advice, and were staring intently at one another, locked in an oddly intense staring competition that ended when one of Teal’c’s eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise and Daniel slumped.

“I believe I can see these icons as well,” Teal’c informed them all calmly, “Most interesting. I now understand why our companions mentioned looking at Daniel Jackson to be uncomfortable.”

Sam hummed questioningly, and focused on Daniel, her eyes widening in shock at the constantly scrolling numbers and symbols next to his name.

“Oh _wow_ ,” She breathed. The longer she watched, the more esoteric the symbols got, until they started bleeding past the invisible boundaries that kept them legible and started corrupting the symbols around them. It finally got to be too much for her, and she blinked, looking away. “Daniel, are you sure you feel okay?”

“What?” He looked confused, “I feel fine, why?”

“It’s… hard to explain,” she said, then rolled her eyes at the look on his face and tried anyway.

“Your words,”

“Icon,” Naotsugu provided helpfully, and Sam nodded,

“Your icon is weirdly corrupted. Your name is fine, mostly, but where it says ‘level’ on everyone else, it gets weird. You know that ‘eldritch’ font one of the airmen found and installed as a joke? Like that, but it moves, and the longer you watch the worse it gets.”

Daniel frowned, “That does sound weird, but why are you asking if I’m okay? It’s not like it’s connected to me, or doing anything to me.”

Sam hesitated, and Shiroe swooped in.

“Not necessarily. Icons are a visual representation of the well being of a person. Of _anything_ , really. I mentioned the Geniuses, earlier?”

He waited for them to nod, then continued.

“They have corrupted icons. With a Genius, though, it’s either just the name, or the level _and_ the name.”

“So Daniel isn’t a genius?” Jack said, and shot a crooked smirk at Daniel, “No offense,”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Thanks Jack.”

“Not that kind of Genius, no. The point is,” Shiroe pressed, “that icons are a decently reliable reflection on the physical and mental status of a person. To see an icon doing something like _that_? It’s… not good.”

“But I feel fine!” Daniel protested, and Shiroe nodded to him.

“Which is a good sign that maybe it’s just a glitch.”

“But you don’t think so,” Jack said, watching Shiroe with sharp eyes.

“We’re living in a world based on a video game.” he said simply, “Anything _could_ be possible, but recently we’ve seen a lot of things that don’t make sense, and usually they’ve come back to bite us. So no. I don’t think it’s ‘just’ a glitch, but I don’t have any better explanation, either.”

  


* * *

Later that night, Akatsuki lay in bed, her breathing deep and even as she waited.

She’d thought she’d seen some subtle signaling among the strangers earlier, before they’d split up for bed, so now here she was, listening to Major Carter’s breathing in the darkness of her room and waiting for something to happen.

Her patience was rewarded when, after a while, she heard the sound of blankets being eased out of, and the tentative footsteps of someone unfamiliar with the terrain walking around in the dark.

_Gotcha._

She had to admit to being almost impressed when the door opened nearly silently, and shut equally as quietly. She’d altered the thing herself so that the hinges would creak if anyone didn’t know the trick to opening it, and tightened the spring in the handle so that it would spring back loudly if it was let go.

Akatsuki gave it a moment, then slid out of her bed and padded over to the door, belting her sword on as a just-in-case before swinging the door open and following Major Carter’s trail down the stairs.

To her relief, the trail led to the living room, and the low murmur of voices made her relax, even as she crept closer to the doorway to listen.

“-at do we do if they’re telling the truth?”

“C’mon Daniel, you really believe that that many people just conveniently _happen_ to show up on one of the worlds that the SGC decides to explore?”

“But SGC didn’t just _decide_ to explore this world,” Sam pointed out, her voice quiet and thoughtful, “you did. Out of all the addresses in the database, you chose this one. Why?”

The sound of shifting cloth. Akatsuki would have bet her goat slime plushy that the colonel was shrugging,

“It was the first address that caught my eye? Hell, Carter, I don’t know! It seemed like it might be interesting, is all.”

More cloth, and Akatsuki wished she could risk peeking around the corner, but without a better idea of what they were capable of, she really didn’t want to risk getting caught.

“Putting that aside for the moment,” the first voice again, from the man with the corrupted icon, “Jack, you have to look at this logically. We know that people went missing from earth a year or so back. These people claim to be from earth. The timelines match up, the colloquialisms match, hell, even the _food_ matches up, as much as it can when you’re accounting for differing planets.”

“Were you listening to that guy’s story?” Jack demanded, his voice raising for a brief moment before he was shushed by the others, “Best estimate, he says, there’s thirty _thousand_ people from earth here. We can’t just ship ‘em back through the gate, it’d be chaos! How’re we supposed to explain their reappearance? We might as well just call up Fox News ourselves and say ‘oh hey, by the way, we found those kidnapped people! Turns out it was aliens all along!’”

Akatsuki scowled, clenching her fists as someone in the room sighed heavily.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be difficult,” Daniel admitted, “especially for the ones that are obviously not human anymore. But maybe the Asgard could help return them to normal? And if they signed confidentiality agreements, we could drop them in remote areas where they could find their...”

“Thirty. Thousand. People.” Colonel O’Neill’s voice was flat as it cut across Daniel’s rambling. “If even a _quarter_ of those people show up out of nowhere it’s gonna be a media circus. And that’s assuming that all of them would _stick_ to an NDA in the first place. Face it Danny, unless we declassify the whole Stargate program on earth, there’s no way we’d be able to ship all of these people home. Assuming of course that we figure out how to get home ourselves.”


End file.
